Immediate Need
If you have immediate need of our services, we're available for you 24 hours a day.Obituaries & Tributes
It is not always possible to pay respects in person, so we hope that this small token will help.Pre-Arrangement
A gift to your family, sparing them hard decisions at an emotional time.Order Flowers
Offer a gift of comfort and beauty to a family suffering from loss.365 Days of Healing
Daily Grief Support by Email
Grieving doesn't always end with the funeral: subscribe to our free daily grief support email program, designed to help you a little bit every day, by filling out the form below.
52 Weekly Tips
Weekly Email Tips to Support a Grieving Friend
It's hard to know what to say when someone experiences loss. Our free weekly newsletter provides insights, quotes and messages on how to help during the first year.
Our Heritage
The Guenette Funeral Home was founded by Charles Guenette in the early 1930's. He received his Ontario license at the Canadian School of Embalming in Toronto in 1934. Five of Charles's children worked with him, François, Jean-Jacques, Jacqueline, Maurice and Paul, operating funeral homes in Kapuskasing, Hearst, and Timmins as well as a hardware store, a lumber yard and some other small businesses that Charles had established in the area. In the 1950's, Jacqueline and her husband, Jean-Noël, purchased the funeral home in Hearst and began Lafrance Funeral Home. His sons formed a corporation to operate the businesses as Guenette Brothers when their father retired. In 1974 the brothers went their separate ways, with one operating the hardware store, the other the lumber yard, with François operating the funeral home in Kapuskasing and Paul operating the funeral home in Timmins.
In 1986, Jules Joly was approached by François to purchase shares of the Kapuskasing funeral home, which he did, and four years later he acquired the balance of the shares to become sole owner. Over the next few years, Jules did extensive renovations to the interior of the building, and built an addition to make the building accessible to all.
Over the years, Guenette Funeral Home has continued to evolve by bringing in new technology, implementing new policies and staying current with families' needs. This is evident in the awards we have received; the Kapuskasing & District Chamber of Commerce awarded the Guenette Funeral Home in 1997 with Business Person of the Year, Jules Joly; in 2003 with Best Business Website; and in 2004 with Best Customer Service, Allain Dandenault. In 2005, the funeral home was the recipient of the Prix Phénix Ontario Nord from the Chambre Économique de l'Ontario for entrepreneurial excellence in the french language.
In 2015, Allain Dandenault purchased the funeral home from Jules and endeavors to continue serving the families of Kapuskasing and area in the same spirit and compassion that has always been exemplified.