'A strange and sad game of whack a mole': Ontario agency calls out 'obituary pirates'

An Ontario regulatory authority is speaking out about the strange practice of “obituary piracy” — where websites profit by posting often inaccurate information about the recently deceased — saying it’s no tribute, just a ploy to make money.

The posts, which appear to profit through online traffic as grieving families search for information about their loved ones, caused a Toronto family a lot of grief as they tried to understand what happened when their 14-year-old girl passed away.

“It’s got nothing to do with memorializing people who die. It’s wrong, but people keep doing it,” said David Brazeau of the Bereavement Authority of Ontario, which regulates funeral homes in the province.

When a site is called out it disappears, but often something takes its place almost immediately, Brazeau said.

“It’s a strange and sad game of whack-a-mole,” he said.

Shasta Nolan stumbled across several websites that appeared to be articles about her daughter, Kaylee Gillard, a 14-year-old girl from Etobicoke who died in mysterious circumstances in November.

Some of the websites purported to know the reason her daughter died in the headlines, but didn’t deliver in the articles. Others included claims about the specifics of her death that appeared to be simply made up.

Among them: that she had been reported missing shortly before she died, or that she was the subject of a large police search. The Toronto Police Service confirmed that neither of those claims are true.

“They need to be taken down. Whoever’s thought of these gross things, they need to delete their accounts and this needs to come down immediately,” Nolan said in an interview.

Online registries show the websites are based in locations around the world, from Toronto to Reykjavik, Iceland.

Exactly what happened when Kaylee died has yet to be figured out. Her family says she told them she was going with friends to get her nails done.

But then on Sunday, Nov. 21, at about 12:40 p.m., police and paramedics responded to a 911 call of an overdose at a Scarborough public housing complex. Kaylee was far from home and it wasn’t clear how she got there or why.

The Toronto Police deemed the incident not foul play, but haven’t shared many details about that decision with Nolan, who believes there is more to be found and is hoping that anyone who knows anything will contact her or the police. The Ontario coroner is investigating Kaylee’s death.

In an unrelated case in B.C. in 2019, a 14-year-old boy who had been provided drugs by an older child resulted in a manslaughter charge.

Ontario has seen the death of 53 minors in the last three years from overdoses. Of those, 15 were Kaylee’s age or younger. Observers say this is likely an impact of a toxic drug supply that is unregulated and unpredictably potent.

The City of Toronto has requested the federal government decriminalize hard drugs for personal use, and one benefit of that might be that people who use drugs won’t do so in secret, which can put them in hazardous situations.

Nolan’s search for answers has been made harder, not easier, by these websites. CTV News Toronto contacted one website that claimed to be based in Toronto, which took down that post — though many others from a variety of other deaths remain.