Funeral directors in the province say they are very pleased to see capacity limits removed for funerals in our province.

Capacity limits were removed on Tuesday, meaning the only public health order that remains is the mask mandate.

"Very exciting," says Todd Harder, Managing Funeral Director for Birchwood Funeral Chapel Co-op in Steinbach, Man. "It's nice to see that families will have the option to have full serviced funerals again."

Harder says his staff was still busy on Wednesday bringing their funeral home back to its pre-pandemic state. He notes with the mask mandate now the only remaining public health order, this is the closest they have been to restriction-free since the start of the pandemic.

And, now that funerals can again be held without any capacity limits, Harder says there are some families that will finally get that closure, noting many funerals have been put on hold until the lifting of restrictions. Some of those may have been put on hold for weeks, others for months.

According to Harder, over the last two years, Birchwood has seen a fairly consistent rate of deaths. However, he notes at the height of COVID-19, they performed more than three times the number of funerals as per normal. Harder says this was directly associated with COVID-19.

Meanwhile, Rob Hiebert at Crossings Funeral Care says the funeral industry has definitely been treated differently over the last two years, with greater limitations than other sectors. He recalls, at their most extreme, funeral services could allow only five people to attend. He notes this became extremely difficult for grieving families.

"What we heard back from those families that each and every time they would run into an acquaintance at a store or on the street they were having to relive the grief and the loss over and over again," explains Hiebert. "The opportunity for the family to have the support at the service was taken away from them."

Manitoba has indicated that mask mandates will be lifted on March 15th. Hiebert says while that is the only restriction still in effect at Crossings, they will certainly accommodate families who might not be comfortable doing away with all mandates.

"Should a family come to me and request that they would like to have certain restrictions implemented for the service of their loved one, we would certainly honour their wishes and follow the directive of the grieving family," he assures.

Hiebert says though he does not know of any families that have been holding out to have a funeral, he is aware of some scenarios where a direct cremation took place with a service pending at a later date. Hiebert says he would not be surprised if those families now reach out to him to schedule a funeral.