Montreal woman's ashes will sent to space as part of a 'spaceflight memorial'

Funeral services and commercial space flights are two very different industries, but an American company called Celestis, Inc. offers international families "memorial spaceflights" for their dearly departed's cremated remains.

The next voyage will include a Montreal-born teacher named Wendy Holmes.

In Cape Canaveral, a group of people cheer as small rockets blasts off into the atmosphere. Carrying precious cargo into space, this Celestis, Inc. Memorial Spaceflight takes small tubes of ashes far, far away.

Charles M. Chafer, co-founder and CEO of Celestis, Inc., explains: "Our most popular service flies a symbolic portion of cremated remains in an individual flight capsule to earth orbit." He says that journey is five years.

"You can track that on our website so folks can go out and say, 'Hey, Dad's going over tonight!' and celebrate that. After five years, the laws of physics bring the satellites back towards the earth where they re-enter and burn up in entirety. So it's kind of an ashes to ashes service," says Chafer.

Wendy Holmes was born and raised in Montreal before meeting her future husband and moving to Ontario to teach. Glenn Holmes says she loved space, so when Wendy died last month, her husband decided her final sendoff would be truly out of this world.

"We like surprises in giving tokens of our love for each other. And this was one for her. My last one I can ever do for her," says Holmes.

Celestis, Inc. services start at $4,000 USD as Celestis piggybacks their loads on commercial spacecrafts.

"We are always attached permanently to what we're flying with, either a rocket or a satellite," explains Chafer, who adds that the Federal Aviation Administration issues all the launch licences. "We aren't affecting national security, we aren't affecting public safety, and that we're compliant with foreign policy." 

Launches are sometimes from Cape Canaveral and families are encouraged to gather for send-off.

"We literally get to watch the transition from grief to joy right before our eyes, and everyone arrives in some stage of grief. There's a loss and we can't eliminate that, obviously, but it's just amazing. You'll never see as much high-fiving and cheering at a funeral service as you see at our launch events when that rocket lights," Chafer says.

A life-long learner, friend and wife, Holmes says Wendy deserved a special remembrance.

"I did not want it to be just a figment of somebody's imagination in history and a pile of dust somewhere," says Holmes. "She accomplished a lot ... and I think this is a lot better than a tombstone."

By his calculations, the total cost for this original goodbye adds up to $15,000 for some of Wendy’s cremated remains to be aboard the Serenity flight, a Space-X Falcon 9 scheduled for lift-off April 2025 from Florida. Holmes says "she'd give me hell, but I think she'd really be happy."