The Burial is based on a true story that examines a deal gone bad with Vancouver funeral company owner Ray Loewen. Just watched The Burial, a new movie streaming on Amazon Prime about the multi billion-dollar “death industry” that is both disturbing and “boisterously entertaining,” thanks to two great Oscar-winning actors, Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx. It’s about a handshake contract deal gone bad between Jeremiah O’Keefe (Jones), a Mississippi funeral-home proprietor with eight locations, and Ray Loewen, who headed a multinational funeral-home empire based in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver ..read more

A photo from the website of Oliveira Funeral Home in Port Coquitlam A British Columbia woman is suing a Port Coquitlam funeral home for failing to properly care for the body of her deceased 91-year-old father. The plaintiff, Nooshin Mozafar, claims in her lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court, that the wrong body was transferred to a mosque for cleaning and wrapping, according to Muslim rituals, in preparation for burial, according to a recent story in the Tri-City News. Mozafar claims when she went to the mosque to view her father’s body, she was shocked to find the wrong person had been delive ..read more

Here is a recent story from CBC’s Go Public: Before cancer took his life last April, John Rothwell made his dying wishes clear: if mourners wanted to donate to a cause in his name, the money should go to an educational fund he and his family set up. Instead, family and friends unwittingly paid for a product that puts money into the pockets of companies profiting from grief, says his son. “It’s really alarming,” Nathan Rothwell, 36, of Toronto, told CBC’s Rosa Marchitelli. “My family felt taken advantage of. We were obviously in a pretty vulnerable situation, anybody who’s lost somebody they lo ..read more

The California attorney general filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the Neptune Society, alleging $100 million was “swindled” from customers who prepaid for cremations. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and three Bay Area prosecutors claim that the Neptune Society and its subsidiary Trident Society broke state laws by failing to hold more than $100 million in a fully refundable trust for customers who signed up for prepaid cremation services. The lawsuit alleges that the Neptune Society should have kept the money in reserve for  prepaid cremation customers. “As a result ..read more

The funeral director of the Chant funeral home had her licence revoked. The funeral home had a suspicious fire earlier this year, destroying all records, while under investigation after consumer complaints. CBC photo A funeral director in Sydney, Nova Scotia has had her licence revoked after an investigation found the funeral home was reusing caskets up to six times and failing to put money for prepaid funerals into a trust account. The Nova Scotia Board of Registration of Embalmers and Funeral Directors held an inquiry last month into complaints against Jillian Nemis, a funeral director at ..read more

Tom Crean is an expert on the funeral business, having spent almost 50 years working in funeral service. Now he’s written a book, It’$ Your Funeral: How Grieving Families Are Being Exploited, and How We Can Stop It. The book provides an insider’s view of the funeral industry and is an extension of his consumer advocacy and public education that he’s known for. In the late 1990s he led a movement to save Vancouver’s only public cemetery—Mountain View—from privatization. He also helped organize 4,000 independent funeral firms to defeat Houston-based funeral giant Service Corporation Internation ..read more

The CBC has posted a disturbing video online of a funeral home worker in Edmonton dragging a body from a refrigerated trailer where bodies were being stored. Click here to see the CBC story and the video. A CBC news reporter witnessed the incident on Monday Sept. 9, 2019, and posted the story and video the next day. CBC reported that a man in dark clothing searched inside the darkened refrigerated trailer for the body he had come to collect. “A source told CBC News the man was a funeral home employee.” Seventeen bodies, sheathed in white bags, lined the floor of the refrigerated semi-trailer p ..read more

A class-action lawsuit will begin a hearing today in a Tennessee court involving disturbing allegations that the remains of hundreds of people were mishandled. Opening statements are expected from the lawyers representing relatives about 1,200 deceased, who claim the remains of their loved ones were not handled with dignity but were instead put in graves where other people had been buried and caskets were crushed to make room for more. The lawsuit also claims some bodies were lost at the Galilee Memorial Gardens cemetery, which was shut down in 2014. The class-action also alleges that licensed ..read more

The Serenity Funeral Home in Berwick, Nova Scotia. Source: Google Maps. A funeral board in Nova Scotia has decided to tighten rules after a woman was accidentally cremated during a tragic mixup of bodies. The Nova Scotia Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors also decided to revoke the licence of funeral director David Farmer, who was was responsible for mistakenly cremating the body of  65-year-old Sandra Bennett. To make matters worse, the body of 96-year-old Myrtle Wilson was embalmed and presented as Bennett during a family visitation last Dec. 27, which shocked the family. Bennet ..read more

Here’s a good news story for a change. New Zealand seniors are forming Coffin Clubs to build their own coffins, adding their personal style with paint and other decorations for when the time comes when they might need to use it. The do-it-yourself movement began in 2010, started by a palliative care nurse, Katie Williams, in a makeshift workshop in her garage in Rotorua, on the North Island. She got some volunteer handymen to help local seniors build their own coffins — they are made from particleboard kits and are shaped like traditional caskets or as rectangles. “Because of my work and my a ..read more