Quebec woman mistakenly declared dead fights to prove she’s alive

A Montreal woman is dealing with a nightmare at the SAAQ after she was wrongfully declared dead.

Since her father Vasilios Daskalopoulos died on July 12, Ourania “Nia” Daskalopoulos has been drowning in paperwork.

As an only child, she was his caregiver over the last five years and in charge of his estate.

When she received a letter from Quebec’s automotive insurance board, the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), last week, she was surprised that her name, not her father’s, was on the envelope.

“When I looked at the envelope, I saw succession of Ourania Daskalopoulos,” she said. “I thought no, wait a minute. What’s going on? There must be a mistake.”

The letter offered condolences for her death and instructions on transferring ownership of her vehicle. When she called the SAAQ, she found out her licence had been cancelled, creating a domino effect for her health card, passport and her file with Revenue Canada and Revenue Quebec.

“The agent I spoke to on the telephone highly recommended that I contact seven different agencies from Quebec,” she said.

Upon further investigation, she found out the error occurred when the funeral home mistakenly put her driver’s licence number on her father’s declaration of death form.

She said she had been asked for identification when she was submitting her father’s paperwork to the funeral home and somehow it got included.

“I paid for the service for them to file, and perhaps I should have double checked, but I really was not in any frame of mind to do so,” she said.

A spokesperson from the SAAQ confirmed this is what happened, telling CTV “…the error stemmed from the fact that the funeral home had written the woman’s driver’s license number instead of that of her deceased father on the declaration sent to the Directeur de l’état civil. This is an exceptional situation ... we can confirm that it is now fixed.”

Considering legal action

Daskalopoulos doesn’t want to name the funeral home and is considering possible legal action. She said the funeral home blames the SAAQ for the error.

Either way, she said this mistake could haunt her for the rest of her life.

“I could go on vacation, enter into Canada and they could say, wait a minute, you don’t have a passport, this person died in July of 2025,” she said.

“Even at the time of my real passing, the executor, my daughter, like somebody could say to her, `Well, wait a minute, what’s going on? Your mother was declared deceased in 2025.’”

She said this bureaucratic nightmare has added to what was already a difficult time, and she hasn’t had time to grieve the passing of her father.

Instead, she is trying to navigate several agencies to get documented proof that she is still alive.