Take care of a family and a body in the days after a death, and get every legal detail right.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $65,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $37,000 at the lower end to about $105,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 3 years after high school, on the usual route.
$8,400 to $17,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Yukon. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$65,000
Lower end
$37,000
Upper end
$105,000
Job Bank's national median for funeral directors is $31.25 an hour, about $65,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends ($18.00 and $50.48 an hour) are the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group. Owners' business profit is not part of these wage figures.
$34.62 an hour
The median in Ontario, the highest in Canada
British Columbia is next at $33.54 and Alberta at $32.33. Quebec's median is $27.00 and Nova Scotia's is the lowest, at $25.64. You are paid while you intern, which makes this one of the cheaper professional routes.
Owners earn what the business makes
A funeral home is a business, not just a job
Buying a funeral home takes serious capital, and an owner's income is the home's profit, not a wage.
Roughly, all in
$8,400 to $17,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the cheapest funeral service education program at around $8,000 plus the licensing examinations. The high end is a program at the top of the range, the exams, and your first annual licence renewal with the provincial regulator. The internship that follows is paid work, a year for an embalming licence in Ontario and six months without, so it costs you nothing but time. Compared with other licensed professions this is cheap and quick. The hard part is winning one of the limited program seats and then finding a funeral home willing to take you on.
Compared with most licensed professions this is cheap and fast. The hard part is getting one of the limited seats, then getting a funeral home to take you as an intern.
Employer vehicle
Many homes provide a car, since you are on call and moving between sites.
Health and dental
Standard at established funeral homes and chains.
On-call terms
How nights and weekends on call are paid or given back as time off varies by home. Ask before you accept a job.
Stable demand
The work does not disappear in a recession.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
School, a paid internship, exams, licence. Two to three years in most provinces.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Biology and chemistry if you want the embalming licence. English matters because you deal with families all day.
Funeral service education program
1 to 2 years
Only a few approved schools per province, such as Humber in Ontario. In Alberta, Mount Royal University runs online theory plus supervised practicums.
Internship at a funeral home
6 months to 1 year
In Ontario, 1 year for the Class 1 embalming licence and 6 months for the Class 2 non-embalming licence, working through a set list of competencies.
Licensing examinations
Weeks
Set by your provincial regulator, covering law, business practice, care of the deceased and funeral services.
Apply for your personal licence
Ongoing
Then renew it every year and keep up continuing education.
Biology
Anatomy is the foundation of embalming.
Chemistry
Preservation is chemistry, and the safety rules around it matter.
English
You write obituaries and speak to grieving families.
Business or accounting
Funeral homes are small businesses with strict rules about pricing and prepaid contracts.
Every province except Quebec licenses funeral directors personally, and so does Yukon. Quebec licenses the embalmer and the funeral business instead, and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut do not license funeral directors or embalmers. In Ontario the regulator is the BAO (Bereavement Authority of Ontario), which administers the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act and issues two personal licence classes: Class 1, which includes embalming, and Class 2, which does not. Other provinces have their own boards with their own rules, so a licence does not automatically move with you.
Quebec licenses the embalmer and the funeral business, not the funeral director personally, and the training is a 3 year college program offered at only two schools.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary IV Environmental Science and Technology, or Science and the Environment. It is the prerequisite for the funeral services program.
Thanatology DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
3 years
Techniques de thanatologie (171.A0), 3 years, at Collège de Rosemont in Montreal or Campus Notre-Dame-de-Foy. Both teach in French. It covers families, funeral planning, business management and embalming.
Get your embalmer's licence
After graduating
Needed only if you embalm. Santé Québec issues it to people 18 or over, living in Canada, who hold the DEC. $260, renewed every year.
Become a funeral services director
When appointed
Every funeral business must name one. You must be 18, live in Quebec, and prove you know Quebec funeral law: an embalmer's licence counts, or you pass a written exam.
Keep up your training
Ongoing
Embalmers and funeral services directors need at least 9 hours of continuing education every 3 years. The current period runs 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028.
A licence or accreditation from another province can replace the Quebec diploma for embalming, but you first pass a written exam on Quebec's legal framework.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Embalming licence
The Class 1 route in Ontario. More training and more responsibility, and it lets you do the preparation work many homes need.
Crematorium operator training
Separate training for running a crematorium, a different job from directing a funeral.
Preplanning and sales licence
Selling prepaid funeral contracts is its own licensed activity in some provinces.
Grief support training
Short courses that make you better at the part of the job families remember.
Driver's licence
Not optional. You will drive hearses and transfer vehicles.
A second language
Funeral customs differ by community, and families want to be understood.
Knowledge of religious rites
Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Christian funerals all have specific requirements and timing.
Steady nerves
First removal from a home or a hospital is the moment people find out if this is for them.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A call comes in overnight and someone goes out to bring the deceased into the home. Morning is the arrangement meeting: sitting with a family for two hours, working out the service, the casket or urn, the obituary, and the bill. Then paperwork, because a death certificate, burial permit and cremation authorization all have to be exact. Afternoon might be preparation work in the back, or setting up a visitation. Evening is a service, a receiving line, and a family you will see again next week.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In Ontario, money paid ahead for a funeral is held in trust by a bank, trust company or independent trustee, or covered by insurance. The interest offsets price rises, and on funeral contracts signed since June 1990, money left over goes to the estate.
The Bereavement Authority of Ontario approves only two schools for funeral service education: Humber College and Collège Boréal. Seats are limited, so applications are competitive.
Ontario gives emeritus status to funeral directors who have held their licence for 50 years in a row.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Faith and end of life first, then the rest of the field. See every career in community and public service.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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