Iqaluit (Apr 04/05) - Residents stumbling home from the bar on Saturday night sometimes mistake Tim Neily's white Ford Explorer, with its lights mounted on the roof, for a taxi.

"You don't want a ride home in this," says Nunavut's chief coroner.

Right now business is unusually slow, and in his case, that's a good thing.

"It's the quietest I've ever seen," he says.

The past three months have seen four suicides across Nunavut and no accidental deaths so far. but he knows it can't stay this quiet forever.

Since Nunavut's beginning in April 1, 1999, there have been 165 suicides - mostly men in the late teens or early 20s.

"That's 7-8 classrooms of people that's gone," he says. "They should have been around for another 50 years, contributing to Nunavut, to their communities. And they're gone."

"It's got to stop."

Some mornings the phone rings and wakes Neily at 3 a.m. It's the RCMP. As he drives to the hospital, parks and heads for the emergency room, he says one of the most difficult things is the uncertainty he faces.

"You don't know if it's an elder, or a child. It could be someone you know very well. That gets a little tough sometimes."

Neily has lived in Iqaluit for 25 years, where he worked as a high school science teacher before becoming a coroner 15 years ago. His says his job is full of stressful, emotionally charged situations, so at home, he focuses on his family and builds furniture and small crafts, like the wooden clock that ticks away inside his office.

"I guess it's a form of therapy," he says.

At work he spends much of his time co-ordinating over 50 part-time coroners across the territory, who spend most their lives working regular jobs. In Nunavut, a medical background isn't needed - just interest.

Recruiting new employees isn't always easy, but hamlet offices and RCMP seem to always find someone when needed, he says.

"It's not the kind of job where we can set up a booth at a trade fair."

Neily's inquest

This January Neily concluded an inquest into the deaths of four people killed by municipal vehicles in Iqaluit and Qikiqtarjuaq since December, 2000.

Recommendations in his report to improve safety included improving snow clearage inside the city and marking work-zones more clearly.

In a few months Neily will up to see whether his suggestions had been followed. From what he's informally observed so far, he says some progress has been made.

"It seems they're making more effort to zone off areas where they're working," he says.

Coroners work as sleuths to answer important questions surrounding a death: where, when, why and how. Their work can be traumatic, but Neily says he's driven by the knowledge that he helps bring closure for family members - and the person who's died.

"It's the person who died who's counting on you. They're lying there asking, why did I die? It's our responsibility to answer that question."