How to Write an Obituary in Canada — Structure, Cost, and Three Examples

An obituary does two jobs at once. It is a public notice — it tells people that someone has died and when the service is — and it is the short account of a life that the family will keep. Those two jobs pull in different directions, which is why the same obituary is often published twice: a brief paid notice in a newspaper, and a longer version on the funeral home's website where length costs nothing.

No Canadian jurisdiction requires you to publish one at all.

Where obituaries get published #

The funeral home's website. Almost every Canadian funeral home hosts obituaries for the families it serves, usually at no additional charge as part of the arrangements. This is where most people will actually read it, and it is normally the version that can be edited afterwards.

A newspaper. Local and daily papers run paid notices. This still reaches people who do not use the internet much — often exactly the generation that knew the person who died.

Online memorial and obituary-listing sites. A broad category of sites aggregate notices and add guest books. Some are free, some charge, and some republish what the newspaper already carried.

Community, faith, and workplace channels. A parish bulletin, a union or association newsletter, a Legion branch, a professional body, or an alumni page will often publish a notice for a member at no cost. These are easy to forget and cost nothing.

Publishing in more than one place is normal. Each reaches a different set of people.

Gather the facts before you write #

Writing is much faster when the facts are already on the page. Collect:

• Full legal name, and the name people actually used
• Date of death, and date of birth if the family wants it published
• Where they were born
• Parents' names, including a mother's maiden name if the family uses it
• Schools, apprenticeships, degrees, trades
• Work — employers, roles, how long
• Military service, if any, including branch and years
• Community life — congregations, clubs, volunteering, teams, memberships
• Surviving family and predeceased family, with correct spellings
• Service details — type, date, time, place
• Where donations should go, if the family is asking for them

Confirm the spelling of every living person's name with someone who would know — a misspelled grandchild is the error families remember for years. And settle the family list before you start writing, not while you are writing it.

The standard structure #

Canadian obituaries follow a recognisable order. You do not have to use all six parts.

1. The announcement. Name, age, where and when they died. One or two sentences.
2. The life. Born where, to whom, schooling, work, service, what they spent their time on.
3. The family. Survived by, and predeceased by.
4. The service. Type, date, time, place, and any instruction such as "a private family gathering".
5. Donations or flowers. "In lieu of flowers…" if the family is directing gifts somewhere.
6. The closing. A thank-you to caregivers, a line that sounds like them, or nothing at all.

Wording survivors and predeceased family #

This is the part families find hardest, and the conventions are simple.

Work outward from the closest relationships. Spouse or partner first, then children, then grandchildren and great-grandchildren, then siblings, then the wider family. Group people by relationship rather than listing them one by one — "his sons Michael and Peter" reads better than two separate clauses.

Give the relationship to the person who died, not to you. You may be writing it, but the obituary is about them. "Survived by her sister Annette" — not "my aunt Annette".

Nobody appears twice. Anyone who died before the person being remembered belongs on the predeceased line only, never on both.

Numbers are fine when names would run long. "Survived by eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren" is perfectly standard, and it keeps a paid notice affordable.

Decide on partners and step-family in advance. Including sons- and daughters-in-law, step-children, and long-term partners is common and generally the safer default. Leaving someone out reads as a statement whether you meant it that way or not.

"Predeceased by" is the usual Canadian phrasing for family who died earlier. "Sadly missed by" and "lovingly remembered by" are alternatives to "survived by" if the plain version feels cold.

Whether to include the cause of death #

Entirely optional, and there is no default you owe anyone.

Families include it when they want to name an illness, support a cause, honour caregivers, or stop speculation. Families leave it out when it is nobody's business, when the circumstances are painful, or simply because it does not belong in the account of a life.

General phrasing exists precisely for this — "peacefully at home", "after a long illness", "suddenly" — and none of it obliges you to say more. If the family is divided, leaving it out is the reversible choice: you can always say more later, and you cannot unpublish a printed notice.

Cost, deadlines, and word limits #

Cost. Funeral home websites and most community channels publish at no additional charge. Paid newspaper notices are usually priced by the line, and published Canadian rates commonly sit around $10 per line plus tax, with each line holding roughly thirty characters. In practice a short notice frequently lands in the $150-$200 range, and a longer notice with a photo can run several hundred dollars or considerably more in a large daily. A photo is charged as space — it can consume the equivalent of a dozen or more lines — and weekend editions often cost more than weekdays.

Rates differ enough between papers, cities, and days that the only reliable figure is the one the paper gives you. Ask for the current rate card before you write, and ask two specific questions: what a photo costs, and whether blank lines are charged. They usually are.

Deadlines. Papers set a cut-off, typically a day or more ahead of the edition, and it is earlier for weekend editions. If the notice needs to appear before a service, work backwards from the deadline rather than the service date. Funeral homes place notices constantly and generally know each local paper's cut-off — ask yours.

Word limits. Print notices are limited by what you are willing to pay rather than by a fixed cap. Online venues sometimes impose a real character limit. If you are publishing in both, write the long version first and cut the short one out of it; going the other way tends to produce a thin long version.

Three worked examples #

These are complete and original, written to be copied and adapted. The people in them are invented. Replace the details and keep whatever phrasing works.

A short notice — about 65 words #

DOYLE, Robert Alan "Bob" — at Kettle Bay on March 4, 2026, in his 78th year. Predeceased by his wife Ellen. Survived by his son Thomas, his daughter Alice, and his sister Margaret. A celebration of Bob's life will be held at the Kettle Bay Community Hall on March 15, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Kettle Bay Hospital Foundation would be appreciated.

Use this when the paid notice is a pointer and the real obituary lives online. It carries everything a reader needs to act on.

A standard obituary — about 220 words #

Robert Alan Doyle died at Kettle Bay on March 4, 2026, at the age of 77.

Bob was born in Pinehurst Falls, Ontario, to Arthur and Winifred Doyle. He went to school there, finished a millwright apprenticeship, and served in the Royal Canadian Navy reserve from 1968 to 1972. He then spent thirty-one years as a millwright at the Kettle Bay paper mill, and retired from the same trade he started in.

Outside of work he was a member of the Kettle Bay Legion branch and spent his Saturdays with the woodworking guild, where he made more cutting boards than anyone could reasonably use. Anyone who got a lift from Bob will remember the tin of butterscotch sweets he kept in the truck for passengers.

He was predeceased by his wife of forty-nine years, Ellen. He is survived by his son Thomas, his daughter Alice, his sister Margaret, and five grandchildren.

A celebration of Bob's life will be held on Saturday, March 15, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at the Kettle Bay Community Hall. In lieu of flowers, the family would welcome donations to the Kettle Bay Hospital Foundation.

The family would like to thank the nurses on the third floor at Kettle Bay General for their kindness.

The everyday length: enough to give a sense of the person, short enough that a paid print notice is not painful.

A longer life story — about 430 words #

Robert Alan Doyle — March 4, 2026

Bob Doyle died at home in Kettle Bay on March 4, 2026, at the age of 77.

He was born in Pinehurst Falls, Ontario, the only son of Arthur and Winifred Doyle. Arthur worked the rail line and Winifred kept the books for a lumber yard, and Bob grew up in a house where things were fixed rather than replaced — a habit that turned out to be the shape of his whole working life.

He finished at Pinehurst Falls Secondary and took a millwright apprenticeship. Between 1968 and 1972 he served in the Royal Canadian Navy reserve. He came back to a job at the Kettle Bay paper mill and stayed thirty-one years, working nights for most of the first decade. He knew the machinery well enough that people phoned him at home after he retired, and he always answered.

Bob married Ellen Farrow in 1974. They had two children, Thomas and Alice, and stayed in the same house on Bellamy Street for forty-one years. Ellen died in 2023. Bob kept her garden going afterwards, badly at first and then rather well.

He belonged to the Kettle Bay Legion branch and turned up most Saturdays at the woodworking guild, where he taught anyone who asked and several people who did not. He produced an unreasonable number of cutting boards. Every grandchild has one.

What people mention most is the small thing: the tin of butterscotch sweets he kept in the truck for whoever was riding with him. He never made anything of it. It was simply there, and offered, every time.

Bob was predeceased by his wife Ellen and by his parents Arthur and Winifred. He is survived by his son Thomas, his daughter Alice, his sister Margaret, five grandchildren, and a great many people at the mill and the guild who will miss him.

A celebration of Bob's life will be held on Saturday, March 15, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at the Kettle Bay Community Hall. Everyone is welcome. In lieu of flowers, the family would be grateful for donations to the Kettle Bay Hospital Foundation, which cared for Ellen and later for Bob.

The family would like to thank the nurses on the third floor at Kettle Bay General, and the neighbours on Bellamy Street who checked in every day this winter.

Use this length where it costs nothing — a funeral home page, an online memorial, or the printed order of service. Almost every sentence is a fact somebody supplied; that is what makes it read as true rather than as filler.

Before it goes out #

• Read it aloud once. Anything you stumble over, rewrite.
• Check every name against a second source — a card, a contact list, another relative.
• Check the dates, especially the service date and the day of the week.
• Have someone who was not involved in writing it read it cold.
• Save the full text somewhere the family can find it later. It gets used again — for the order of service, for a memorial page, and sometimes years later.

What we focus on at It's Simple Will #

If you would rather not start from a blank page, the Order of Service Planner walks through the same facts this guide lists and drafts an obituary from them, in a short, standard, or full-length version. You can edit every word, and it will not add anything you did not tell it.

Related guides #

• Writing a eulogy
• Gathering photos for a funeral
• Online memorial pages
• Notifying family after a death
• Funeral planning in Canada — the complete guide