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AKLAVIK
When Marjorie Storr died in Aklavik on Sept. 14, her family was forced to store her body in a deep freezer until her funeral six days later.

They had no other choice, according to her sister Juliette Rivet, and because of that she is haunted every day.

"I can't get it out of my mind. Now when I open my freezer I think she's in there. It's horrible. The body is a sacred vessel and it should be treated as such, you know, not like a piece of garbage zippered up. If your sister or brother was in a bag decomposing you would be upset too. It didn't hit me until today. I was crying so much" she said.

"It's a disrespect to the dead. Even during residential school we had a little cabin in the back. Kids died, eh? And they had a place for them."

Rivet, who is 70 and now lives in Vernon, B.C., said her sister, who died at 75 and just months after retiring, was denied proper treatment after her death.

Dudley Johnson, who is both the mayor and coroner in Norman Wells, said unfortunately Rivet's story is not unique.

"I've heard complaints that there should be something in every community. Most communities have a community freezer, but that's not an appropriate place to put a body," he said.

Johnson said around five years ago the town of Norman Wells purchased two "port-a-morgues" so they wouldn't be faced with the same problem.

The freezers on wheels can be plugged in anywhere and hold up to two bodies.

Johnson said the remaining Sahtu communities of Colville Lake, Fort Good Hope, Tulita and Deline have absolutely nothing.

"In warm weather the communities fly bodies out as fast as possible to Yellowknife," he said, and if there is a gap between flights he stores them in a port-a-morgue.

Cathy Menard, chief coroner in the NWT, said Inuvik, Yellowknife, Hay River and Fort Smith are the only communities in the territory with morgues.

"Each community uses something different," she said.

"Some communities may use the church basement, some may use a shed, some use RCMP garages, some use government or private coolers that are in the community."

In the NWT, the Vital Statistics Act dictates burial procedures, but there is no legislation for what happens when someone dies.

Currently, local community governments are in charge of this, but Menard said the planning and preparation often falls to elders.

"We don't have the luxury of funeral homes that people do in southern Canada," she said.

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