Open data / Funeral access in the territories
Nunavut has one funeral home
It is in Iqaluit. The territory covers 2,093,190 km² — larger than Mexico. Across all three territories, which together make up roughly 39% of Canada’s land area, our directory identifies 4 funeral homes in 4 communities: Inuvik, Yellowknife, Iqaluit, Whitehorse.
The territories’ share of Canada
Same country, two very different shares.
Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon combined, of Canada's 9,984,670 km²
4 of the 198 funeral homes listed in our directory
Where the providers actually are
159 geocoded providers at their real coordinates. The three pale territories across the top are the 39% of Canada.
Points show the 159 listings with coordinates — geocoded from the street address where we hold one, otherwise placed at the centre of the community. Equirectangular projection, so distances near the top of the map are visually compressed: if anything this understates how far apart the northern communities are.
| Territory | Land area (km²) | Funeral homes | Communities served |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northwest Territories | 1,346,106 | 2 | 2 |
| Nunavut | 2,093,190 | 1 | 1 |
| Yukon | 482,443 | 1 | 1 |
Why it matters
Most communities in the territories are fly-in. When someone dies outside the four communities listed above, families are generally arranging transport of their loved one by air — often over thousands of kilometres — before any service can take place. That cost and delay does not appear in national averages for what a Canadian funeral costs, because those averages are built from the parts of the country where a funeral home is a drive away.
For comparison, our directory lists 90 providers in Newfoundland and Labrador and 47 in Ontario.
Method, and its limits
Providers are compiled from territorial Vital Statistics offices, provincial funeral regulators, the Funeral Service Association of Canada member directory, and providers’ own websites; each is verified against at least one such source. Counts reflect businesses we could identify and verify, not a government register — the territories have no public licensing list equivalent to Ontario’s or BC’s. Community and church-led arrangements, which carry much of this work in the North, are by their nature not listed as businesses and are not counted here.
If we are missing a provider, tell us and we will add it — corrections make the dataset better and are always welcome at info@keepsakeguide.com.
Free to cite
This page and the underlying dataset are published under CC BY 4.0. Journalists and researchers are welcome to reproduce the figures with attribution to Keepsake Guide. We are happy to pull a custom cut — by province, category or community — on request.
Download the full dataset