My dad lived in Montreal his life. Three years ago, following my mom’s passing and his health issues starting to flare up, he decided to move into a care residence near me in Toronto, since I was the only one capable of seeing him every week.
What nobody told us and what I discovered myself was that the pre-arranged funeral plan he had set up with a provider in Montreal years prior didn’t just follow him – because licensing and regulation were strictly provincial, and not national.
I discovered this when contacting the Quebec provider to ask about a trivial question regarding his plan and was politely informed that they only covered services within Quebec, and that we’d need to set up a separate plan in Ontario should he pass away there, which he technically did. My dad, when I told him the news, was more surprised than anything else that “he paid for something he can’t use” as he put it.
We didn’t cancel his plan, some of the pre-paid amount was transferable as a credit which required a few phone calls to sort out. What we did have to do however was research direct cremation Toronto options, as if we were starting from square one, because this essentially was our situation once he’d moved.
It gave me the opportunity to compare notes on what the original Montreal plan had covered, since I wanted to be sure we weren’t paying for the same things twice, or missing something he may have wanted. The direct cremation Montreal plan he had originally set up actually was quite similar in terms and conditions to the one we eventually set up in Toronto, save for the obvious differences of it being set up in another province with different licensing and regulations.
The one thing that ultimately mattered to my dad, once we’d sorted out the basic terms, was that whatever plan we set up here would reflect what he wanted – no big service, no scattering of ashes, no viewings beforehand. None of that was affected by the change in provinces.
If you find yourself in the position of having to relocate an aging parent across provinces, and they’ve already got something set up back where they’re moving from, don’t assume it’ll simply follow them. Ask right away, while nobody’s in too great of a hurry and everything can be discussed at a calm pace. Fortunately for us, my dad was in good health and able to weigh in on the matter himself. Not everybody is afforded that luxury.
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