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Patrice Chavegros approaches the small patch of land, nestled in the back corner of the Laval cemetery, and slides his smartphone out from his pocket. Opening an email from that morning, he shakes his head.

Chavegros, head of sales and customer service at Magnus Poirier funeral homes, receives similar emails on a near-daily basis. Sent from Quebec’s ministry of health and social services or the provincial coroner’s office, they always trouble him.

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A 64-year-old man, Richard D., died on Jan. 14, 2018, the email reads. His body, kept refrigerated for six months, has never been claimed. The funeral home has now been given permission to cremate the corpse and bury the ashes where Chavegros stands, next to roughly 1,500 other urns holding unclaimed remains.

“It’s sad. This shouldn’t be happening,” Chavegros says. “These people all led interesting lives. But this is how they end up.”

Chavegros has worked in the funeral business for three decades. He never imagined he would witness the number of unclaimed bodies he now sees each year. Quebecers, he fears, are increasingly dying “in complete indifference.”