Da Vinci's Inquest consultant and writer visits YK Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jan 31/01) - He speaks for the dead. In the trade they call themselves ombudsmen.
And for former British Columbia chief coroner Larry Campbell, 52, it landed him a spot in TV land as a writer and consultant with the hit CBC series Da Vinci's inquest -- which some say has interesting coincidences with Campbell's life. Campbell visited Yellowknife last weekend as a keynote speaker at a coroner's conference held at Chateau Nova.
It's not his first time in the North, he's been visiting here since 1988. He's registered in the Northwest Territories and does contract consulting with the Nunavut Government.
"I love coming up here, I don't come up here enough in the summertime," says Campbell.
Campbell has done inquests in Inuvik, Yellowknife and Hall Beach.
He says it's much tougher to perform coroner's duties in the North because communities are so small and chances are a coroner is bound to deal with someone they know.
"It took me years until I saw someone I knew," said Campbell.
"In Vancouver I did 2000 deaths a year, but I didn't know who they were," he says.
"It's much tougher in rural areas, chances are people who die are at the very least friends or family members," he says.
But now Campbell is seeing less of death and more of TV lights.
He started working with Da Vinci's Inquest since its inception in 1998. He says the movement into the writing aspect of it is penance for getting on the show's writers' backs.
"It was not a transition of choice but a forced one by the other writers who I slagged," he says.
Despite being credited with writing one show already he doesn't call himself a writer.
"If you saw my script you'd know I wasn't a writer, I'm more a collaborator," he says. When asked about how much his life has collaborated with the creation of the main character Da Vinci, Campbell just smiles.
"I know the character of Da Vinci intimately," he says, "and there are some coincidences like he's the same age, ex-drug squad, his wife is a pathologist, but he's a little more outspoken," says Campbell.
"Da Vinci is an amalgamation of all coroners," he says.
Is there a writing career in the works for Campbell? Maybe.
"There could be a novel on Da Vinci coming," he says.
Campbell says 20 years of death has given him a front row seat on the frailty of life.
"I'm a different person, I do things now I never did before," he says.
