A cemetery and funeral home chain that started in 1826 with $300 in public donations is in court fighting a ruling that would pry open oversight of more than a half-billion dollars in assets.

Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries is trying to convince a three-judge appeal panel to quash a lower-court finding that it is a charitable trust and that its controlling board must be opened to outsiders.

At stake in the two-day hearing that started Wednesday is control of 10 GTA cemeteries including Mount Pleasant and Toronto Necropolis, plus funeral homes including “The Simple Alternative” chain and four crematoria. More than 600,000 bodies are interred in 1,222 acres.

Justice Sean Dunphy’s findings last December — including that MPGC had in the 1980s improperly ditched rules that could see a trustee elected at a public meeting — was a victory for Moore Park residents who had long fought for financial transparency including executives’ pay.

By 1989, trustees, calling themselves directors, set a maximum of 10 directors serving a maximum of three four-year terms. Only existing directors chose new directors and MPGC acted like an rapidly growing corporation.

Dunphy, of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, ruled that only the seven longest-serving current board members could remain and they had to reinstate procedures for other candidates to be publicly considered.

Lawyer Ron Slaght, representing MPGC, told appeal judges Dunphy made “fundamental errors in law” deciding that legislation from the 1800s — when Town of York residents passed a hat to buy a non-denominational plot to bury their dead — had not altered the charitable trust status of what became a major funeral industry player.

Slaght argued a 1871 law “swept away” a requirement that the board, when it chose a new member, also place an advertisement that could trigger a meeting where members of the public could instead choose the new trustee.

Slaght also warned that Dunphy didn’t properly take into account the impact of his finding that MPGC, with hundreds of staff, had overstepped trust rules by opening “visitation centres” and funeral homes.

Lawyers for Friends of Toronto Public Cemeteries and City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam told the appeal court they’d agree to a one-year suspension of that finding, to let the Ontario government clarify MPGC’s status, but that inner workings of the major landholder must be cracked open.

“They really became accountable to nobody but themselves,” lawyer Michael Watson said of MPGC’s trustees, noting charitable trust status would trigger provincial government oversight.

He argued Dunphy correctly interpreted past legislation but asked the appeal court to overturn one finding — that no formal investigation of MPGC by the Public Guardian and Trust is required.

Watson said that, whatever the appeal court decides, his clients have won a victory by forcing MPGC to acknowledge in court it is a statutory trust, and not akin to a private corporation that can do whatever it likes with its sizable assets.

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“Forcing (trustees) to acknowledge those assets are held in trust is important for the citizens of Toronto,” he said.

The Ontario Court of Appeal is expect to release its ruling at a later date.