Funeral director Amanda Lang has lost track of the number of funerals for unclaimed bodies she’s worked on over her ten-year career.
“When you’re in the business for so long, you become a little bit numb to it,” says Lang, who works at Affordable Burials & Cremations in Toronto.
Preparing for an unclaimed funeral is just like any other, says Lang. Until the funeral day comes and only staff shows up. “There’s no family, there’s no friends. It’s just the deceased, they’re going into a plot surrounded by other unclaimed people. It’s really sad.”
Sad cases like this have increased dramatically in Ontario in recent years — and Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner is only beginning to collect the data to understand why.
In 2022, Ontario buried 983 unclaimed bodies, marking the highest number on record. By comparison, there were just 401 unclaimed bodies in 2017. Over this five-year period, the number of unclaimed bodies increased by 145 per cent while the number of deaths increased by just 13.6 per cent.
Buried on cities’ outskirts
When a person dies in Ontario without any close friend or family member coming forward to handle funeral arrangements, the person is classified as “unclaimed” under Ontario’s Anatomy Act.
Each year, municipalities pay for hundreds of low-cost funerals, burying unclaimed bodies in cemeteries on the outskirts of cities, according to Julia Noonan, a manager at Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner.
Before a body is buried, the coroner’s office, a long-term care home or a hospital is responsible for searching for next of kin to authorize the burial. It can take months to follow a paper trail, says Dave Laemers, the co-founder of Basic Funerals, a low-cost funeral service that assists hospitals and long-term care homes. During this time, unclaimed bodies remain in a morgue.
Many factors can hinder a next-of-kin search. “If [the deceased is] not from the area it can be more challenging, or if there are relatives in another country we have to deal with embassies and consulates,” said Noonan.
Other factors — such as an out-of-date identification document, home address or emergency contact — can also hinder a search.
“Some people just don’t want to be found,” says Stephanie Rea, a worker from Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner who also deals with unclaimed cases.
Data needed
To make sense of the growing numbers, the Office of the Chief Coroner began collecting data in 2022 to understand why deceased go unclaimed.
The 2022 data show that 26 per cent of unclaimed bodies were female and 74 per cent were male.
The data also show that, in 38 per cent of cases, next of kin cannot be identified. An additional 28 per cent of cases stem from next of kin being estranged from the deceased or not locatable.
In 20 per cent of cases, next of kin are unable to claim bodies for financial reasons.
And in eight and six per cent of cases, next of kin are unable to claim kin due to distance or capacity issues, respectively.
While financial incapacity accounts for only a minority of bodies going unclaimed, it may be one of the easiest problems to solve with better education.
There is a common misconception that families have to pay for funeral services if they claim a body of a loved one, says Laemers.
But this is generally not the case, as funeral costs will be drawn from a deceased’s assets before a claimant is asked to cover the cost.
And even if the deceased doesn’t have any assets, there are benefits and assistance programs such as the Ontario Works funeral assistance program and the CPP death benefit, says Lang.
Public awareness and education are key to preventing bodies from going unclaimed, says Lang. “I’ve been saying for years that death happens for everyone. But so many people are unprepared.”
Executor essential
A much larger number of cases of unclaimed bodies occur where no one with legal authority to authorize a burial — an executor, spouse, adult children or parents — can be found.
“If there’s no blood relative, and there’s no executor, we can’t take direction from a friend, even if that friend is willing to pay for everything,” says Lang. “It’s just not an option, our hands are tied legally.”
The easiest way to prevent one’s body from going unclaimed is to name an executor, who has the power to make funeral decisions.
Basic Funerals tries to proactively prevent unclaimed body cases by encouraging clients to prepare a will and assign an executor.
Appointing an executor of a will is a key position because it trumps next of kin and meets the legal requirements for authorizing a burial or cremation, says Laemers, the co-founder of Basic Funerals.
Out of all the unclaimed funerals Lang has witnessed, the hardest cases are the ones where family and friends are willing to claim the body but are unable to.
“We’re having to say no to people who want to do the right thing. Who want to step up and help,” said Lang.
A person in Ontario can apply to court to administer an estate without a will. This should allow them to organize the funeral.
This was an eye-opener. It’s sad to think of anyone lacking even one family member or friend to take care of them at the end. Most in this position probably also had lonely lives. The chart shows that 983 people were in this category last year, compared to less than 250 per year only a decade ago. That suggests to me that loneliness and isolation are on the rise at least in Ontario.