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How We Walk With You
You may not know exactly what you need right now. That's not a problem — it's where most people begin.
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Whether someone you love is dying, whether they've just died, whether you're carrying a grief that's been with you for years, or whether you're simply trying to plan ahead so that your own death one day reflects how you actually lived — The Canoe is here to help you find your way.
We don't believe in one-size-fits-all ceremonies or grief that moves on a prescribed schedule. What we offer is a range of support — practical, relational, and ceremonial — that can be shaped around what you and your family truly need.
Below you'll find the three main ways we work together. If you're unsure where to start, reach out. A conversation costs nothing, and it's usually where the right path becomes clearer.
Honouring A Life
No two lives are the same. Neither should be the ceremony that marks one.
Whether you're planning a gathering days after a death or a memorial months later, we work alongside your family to create something that actually reflects the person you're honouring — their character, their relationships, the particular way they moved through the world.
We bring together the spaces, the partners, and the ceremonial elements that make this possible. What it looks like is entirely up to you. What we bring is the experience, the care, and the community to make it real.
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Our services might include:
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working with our service partners to offer a dignified cremation, one that includes the recovery of the body, incineration, delivery of ashes and the standard requisite of government forms and Pension Benefits (for those eligible);
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finding the right location for your celebration, funeral, ceremony or ritual, be that secular or otherwise;
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finding the right officiant for your celebration, as necessary;
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designing the celebration, including elements of ceremony, ritual and many other offerings;
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Planning memorials to mark the anniversary of a death;
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offering long-term grief support to family and friends.
​Navigating Grief
Grief doesn't follow a schedule, and it rarely looks the way we expect it to.
The Canoe offers support for people navigating loss at any stage — whether a death just happened, whether it happened years ago and still lives in your body, or whether someone you love is dying and the grief has already begun. We work with individuals and families, and we draw on embodied practices — movement, breathwork, ritual, ceremony — that meet grief where it actually lives, not just in the mind.
This isn't counselling in the clinical sense. It's accompaniment. Someone to walk alongside you through terrain that's hard to cross alone.
Advanced Planning​
Most of us know, somewhere, that we should think about this. Few of us do — not because we don't care, but because we don't know where to start, and the conversations feel too large to open.
Planning ahead for your own death — or for that of someone you love — is one of the most generous things a person can do. It relieves the people who will survive you of having to make impossible decisions under impossible conditions. And it gives you the chance to ensure that your death, when it comes, reflects something true about how you lived.
We help individuals and families have these conversations, document their wishes, and begin to build a picture of what a meaningful end-of-life might look like — long before it's needed.
m. 514.503.2116 e. celebrations@thecanoe.co