Fort Norman (June 30/03) - Family, friends, and community members hoped for a funeral befitting a man who was once their chief.

Fred Doctor died so suddenly no one had time to say goodbye. There was no teary bedside farewell, not even one last touch on the cheek as his casket lay before them.

That's because in the week between his death on June 10 to his funeral the following Tuesday his body had been rendered unpresentable to the point an Edmonton-area mortician recommended his casket remain closed during the June 17 funeral service.

"It took too long," says Benny Doctor, Fred's step-brother. "A lot of people are upset about it. Why was it that he was left in a garage in (Norman) Wells?"

The 57-year-old former chief was attending a preschool cook-out at the band hall around 7 p.m. July 10 when he collapsed. His death was almost immediate -- the result, as it was later determined, from an aneurism or bleeding into the brain.

Because his death was unexpected, an automatic autopsy review was triggered, To do that, his body had to be shipped to a pathologist in Edmonton.

No room at the inn

A plane was chartered to take his body to Norman Wells that night. Because there would be no aircraft big enough to take the casket to Edmonton until Thursday, his remains stayed behind in Norman Wells.

Upon arrival, however, it was discovered that the only cooler facility in Norman Wells large enough to hold his body -- at Canadian North cargo -- was locked up for the night. The casket was taken to the RCMP detachment garage until his remains could be placed in cold storage the following day.

According to NWT chief coroner Percy Kinney, Doctor's body was not placed into cold storage until around 2 p.m. -- about 19 hours after his death. He was flown out of Norman Wells 24 hours after that.

By the time his body was autopsied in Edmonton on Saturday it had decomposed considerably.

His sister-in-law, Elaine Doctor, said the funeral home there felt an open casket funeral was possible but thought it would be better otherwise.

"At first they (funeral home) told us that he was too badly decomposed because he was left too long," said Elaine. "They said when a person passes away from an aneurism and if they eat a lot of wild foods they decay faster."

Communities need coolers

Kinney said Doctor's several day journey to the mortuary typifies the problems communities face in dealing with the dead.

"Most of them don't have a facility to store human remains appropriately.

"It's either at the nursing station, or the RCMP garage, or a shed... So if you don't have an appropriate storage facility time is your enemy."

The remoteness and long waits between scheduled flights magnifies the problem, added Kinney.

He said he's often approached the government about the problem, but it always winds up on the back burner. The resources are simply not here like they are in some southern jurisdictions.

"We have to start looking at providing communities an appropriate storage facility," said Kinney.

"You might have family wanting come in from far away, and the family takes two days to get home then tough, you don't get to see grandpa because grandpa won't keep two more days."

Debbie Delancey, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, said providing communities with cooler facilities to store the dead is a "grey area" within the government.

She isn't sure which department should handle the facilities if the GNWT were to provide them.

MACA did pay for community freezers in communities during the 1980s but they were not meant for storing human remains.

"I'm not going to quibble with the coroner about the need for such a facility," said Delancey. "I'm not sure whose responsibility it would be."

Regardless, family and community members in Tulita are left wondering why their former chief was taken on such a lengthy odyssey after his death.

"That's no way to treat a body," said Elaine.