Mandi Howard is sobbing over the coffin of a man she did not know, surrounded by strangers she’s never met.
Yet, she knew she needed to be here. Howard lost her sister unexpectedly last year, but didn’t get to say goodbye or have a ceremony.
So when she heard about a call-out this week, searching for volunteer pallbearers to help at the burial of an unclaimed body in Oshawa, Ont., she didn’t hesitate.
“I do have family out there who are ‘unclaimed due to homelessness or addictions,'” she said, shortly after the burial.
“I feel like this was healing for me … because none of us are unclaimed.”
About a dozen people showed up for the short service at an Oshawa cemetery Wednesday.
After making small talk in the parking lot, the group was tasked with hoisting the coffin from the hearse. They laid flowers, read a poem and broke into an ad-hoc humming rendition of Amazing Grace. Howard brought along a drum and played a travelling song.
“I don’t feel like I was with strangers,” she said. “It truly feels like we were a group of relatives coming together to send somebody off who really deserved to know that they were loved.”
Citing privacy, the funeral director told the volunteer pallbearers very little about the man whose coffin they carried:
His name was Michael, he lived in Toronto, and he was unhoused.
When no friends or family come to claim a body, municipalities become responsible for paying for burials. So they turn to funeral directors like Nathan Romagnoli, who runs eco Cremation and Burial Services in Mississauga, Ont., and put out the call for pallbearers — the one that Howard and others heard.
“This is our fifth occasion of this week,” said Romagnoli of the unclaimed burials. “It happens to elderly people, mid-aged people and unfortunately, this week, to an infant, a baby, which we cared for as well.”
Not every funeral director accepts unclaimed bodies — nor does every cemetery, given the rate municipalities pay. Romagnoli said, “This cemetery is the only cemetery that would accept this individual.’
In Ontario, the number of unclaimed bodies has spiked since the pandemic. In 2024, the chief coroner reported that 1,436 bodies were not claimed. The majority of those (1,023) were in Toronto.
Raymond Wieser has been volunteering as a pallbearer since the pandemic. He’s a genealogist, explaining how his interest in families made him want to show up for those who don’t have family.
“It means that the people who are supposedly labelled as unclaimed actually have a family, even if it’s not a chosen family,” he said.
“It is a family of strangers coming together in a common purpose to show respect for this person and to lay them to rest with dignity.”
Typically, Wieser says, not very many people come to the burials, perhaps three or four. He says Wednesday’s goodbye was special — they had too many pallbearers.
“It shows that people actually do care.”
