North Battleford residents familiar with the old bus depot in the north end of the city might look twice at the building when they see it now.
The former depot for STC and Greyhound bus service is now the new location Eternal Memories Funeral Service and Crematorium. Owner-operators Trevor and Adria Watts moved the business into the location at 2691- 98th Street in July of this year.
Eternal Memories had been operating in the city since Oct. 2012 and had previously been located at a location at 2741- 99th Street. The business has quickly expanded, partly because early on the business acquired a crematorium, the first one in the city.
The size of the old location was 1,750 square feet, which suited their needs in the beginning but not anymore.
“Business increased for us every year, so we needed to have a bigger facility to better suit families’ needs,” Trevor said. They were hiring more staff and needed a bigger viewing room to accommodate families. They were having people come into the building almost daily, he said.
“It took us eight years to finally get here and we found this place was for lease,” Trevor said.
He knew the owner and talked to him and made the deal to buy the property. He then contracted Lyle Schell and drew up plans to renovate the facility, and the renos went ahead.
“It was like it was meant to be because it just went so seamless,” Adria said.
She said Trevor’s reaction when he saw the building was “that’s it, that’s the building.”
Trevor said there were a number of reasons the building appealed to them.
“Well, there was enough square footage when you looked at it. The architecture of the building and the windows in it made it look like it was actually an inviting building. It almost looked like it could be remodelled on the inside and you could open it as a funeral home ... we knew we could turn it into something really nice.”
The building itself was not an old building when they bought it — about a decade old.
It was transformed from being basically one big open warehouse, with an office in it where the waiting room was.
With the renovations, they added offices, an arrangement room, a viewing room, and a 2,500 square foot garage was added to house the crematorium, bringing the size ultimately to around 5,300 square feet.
As part of the process, Eternal Memories had to write to the city to get the proper zoning approval for the crematorium. That discretionary land use application approval came through last January, 2019.
By the time it was all said and done the whole purchase and renovation cost over a million dollars.
In 2018 they bought out one of their competitors, Battlefords Funeral Service, owned by the Edwards family from Saskatoon. So now Eternal Memories has two fully-functional locations: at the north end location they have the viewing room, arrangement room and crematorium, while those who want to use a chapel can utilize the downtown location on 100th Street.
With the two locations they now have six full time and around 20 part time staff — a far cry from the beginning when it was just Trevor handling all the work.
“Even right down to making the cards and doing the paperwork. Now that I’m involved I can’t believe (he did it) himself,” Adria said.
They like to emphasize they are a local business and like to support the local community. Trevor himself has been active as a volunteer firefighter for years with the city and now with the RM of North Battleford department.
All the changes at the funeral business come during the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and all the restrictions, which ended up curtailing funeral services across the country.
Now under Re-Open Saskatchewan they are allowed 30 percent of capacity up to 150, whichever is less.
When people come in to make funeral arrangements they only allow four people in at a time, for safety reasons. The business has been keeping up on all the rules as they come in which they are able to share with families.
“People are starting to get back to funerals now, which is good,” Trevor said. “People need that closure — people need a chance to grieve and say goodbye.”
