There are several authorizations that must be obtained by the funeral home before a cremation can take place. In the interim, your loved one is in our care until authorizations are complete. Cremation can take place as early as one day to as long as it takes to receive all the required documentation.
Our funeral home “service fee” for cremation (with no church or other service) is $1,395 plus HST.
Please note that what is provided for that fee may vary greatly with each service provider, funeral home or transfer service that you may be talking to.
Be sure to compare what is included in the “service fee” of any other service provider that you may be considering. Click Here to see Cremation Cost Comparison between our funeral home and other providers.
Yes, you and your family can partipate in the cremation. Please let our funeral director know your wishes and we will make the arrangements with the crematory to accomodate.
Yes, you could purchase an urn from a different supplier. Dependent on what your plans are with the urn, in-ground burial, niche interment, kept at home, fly overseas or another option, please talk to our funeral director to understand what specifications may be required. We invite you to compare urns with those available on display in our showroom.
There are many options available in regards for placement of your loved one's ashes. Some options include burial, scattering or perhaps kept at home or in a safe. It has also become popular to have ashes placed into items of jewellery or art. Our funeral directors can assist you in exploring your options.
Embalming is optional and can only be done with permission of the legal family representative. It is our funeral home policy to have a deceased embalmed if their family has chosen to have a visitation or service for their loved one with body present.
The whole cremation process can take up to a few hours, from the time our professional staff brings your loved one to the crematorium, to when the crematory has completed their process and have placed the cremated remains (ashes) into a resin urn-like container.
Both City of Kitchener and City of Waterloo crematoriums use natural gas as their cremation fuel.
Yes, we will dress your loved one before cremation; however, it can be in whatever clothing your family chooses (pajamas, casual atire, formal atire). If an outfit is not provided, we will cover your loved one in a dignified cloth before cremation.
It is fairly common to include notes, art or remembrances in with the loved one as part of cremation. This can usually be accommodated but should be discussed with the funeral director for specifics, as there are certain type of materials, such as metal, that would not be recommended.
The planning of a commemoration service is a separate decision regardless of whether the deceased is to be buried or cremated. Some form of service, celebration of life, graveside event or a combination thereof is still the most popular choice that many families would make.
A columbarium is a structure designed to accept one or two urns in a permanent receptacle usually with an engraved covering plate. A mausoleum is the same concept but it is designed for casketed remains in a building on the cemetery grounds.
A funeral director can guide you in explaining options for memorial services, visitations, celebrations of life etc. Often a bit of discussion with a funeral director will naturally lead to a preference that just "feels right" for your family situation.
In addition to the resource mentioned previously, we have a published General Price List that clearly states the cost of every facet of every type of funeral arrangement. The funeral director who works with you will present you with a detailed contract of all costs for your approval prior to the start of services being provided so that you have full transparency of all costs.
Beyond our funeral home's service fee, additional costs would be the casket/container for cremation, registration fee with the city, coroner (doctor) fee for their approval for cremation, crematorium fee (through City of Kitchener, or City of Waterloo), newspaper notice (obituary) and, if there is a service or visitation to take place, possibly flowers and catering.
Generally these would include goods or services ordered by the family, supplied by businesses apart from the funeral home; however, these may be co-ordinated to be included in the invoice from the funeral home. Some examples would include flowers, catering, clery honoraria, newspaper notices etc.
The general rule is payment for optional extras from third party suppliers are usually needed at the time of the ordering because the third parties require immediate or almost immediate payment. The funeral home provides assistance in the ordering of these optional extras with no additional charges from the funeral home.
Yes, our funeral directors can work with you to arrange for an inground or above ground niche interment. Depending on the cemetery, a family can choose where they would like their loved one's cremated remains interred.
When planning a cremation or funeral service for a loved one, we will require a will, if there is one. We will require your loved one's Social Insurance Number card, and if they have a surviving spouse, we will require their's, plus a marriage certificate to assist with Canada Pension papers. We also ask families to bring in clothing for their loved one, as we normally provide a time of viewing for the immediate family before cremation. If the family would like to place an obituary in the paper, we request a photo and then send that along to the papers. If the family chooses to have a Celebration of Life, Memorial or Visitation, we can receive photos which would be assembled in a video tribute for the gathering.
Yes, you can write your loved one's obituary. We can assist you in writing as well as contacting the newspapers to have it published. CLICK HERE for guidance in your obituary writing.
Your funeral director will help you to navigate this decision. Often one or more memorial donation choices will be selected and the public can complete a memorial donation at the funeral home or online. Some may still desire to send flowers as their way of expressing their condolences to the family.
In Ontario, we are bounded by our provincial law and according to Ontario.ca: Handling cremated remains
In Ontario you may: