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NUNAVUT
With few smaller communities having their own morgue, bodies are sometimes stored in an RCMP garage or picked up by municipal staff for storage until family members arrive in the community for the burial, a situation the Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM) wants to change.

Iqaluit is one of seven communities with a morgue. Bodies in other communities are sometimes stored in an RCMP garage or picked up by municipal staff for storage until the family arrives for the burial. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL photo

This past spring NAM called on the territorial government to provide an inventory on the status of existing morgues and to work with the association to address the lack of morgues in most communities.

Hall Beach, which has been trying to get a morgue for the last three years, proposed the motion.

Resolute Mayor Tabitha Mullin said she supports the resolution as it might take up to two weeks for families to come to the community for burial. It is "very challenging," she added, to find a walk-in freezer or somewhere where the bodies can be stored until family members can get in to Resolute for the funeral.

"In the winter, it's not too too bad. We put the bodies in the RCMP garage. It's not heated," she said. "If someone passes away during the summer, it would be very helpful to have a morgue here in town. We do have to keep the bodies somewhere and it's not appropriate to put the body in a community freezer, where people have their foods kept."

Only once, some years ago, was a body put in the community freezer as it took some time for the family to come from Greenland, and Mullin said they don't ever want to do that again because of the community outcry.

When Amittuq MLA Louis Tapardjuk raised the issue of Hall Beach's lack of a morgue in the legislative assembly in May, Premier Eva Aariak responded the territorial government knows it has to make it a priority for every community.

"We have plans to get all the nursing centres established with morgues in the communities," she stated. "We can't make any commitment at this point about getting a morgue in the community because I'm sure that Inuit organizations would like to be consulted as well on how we can deal with this morgue issue."

Cambridge Bay Mayor Syd Glawson said he would be "155 per cent" be in favour of each community getting a morgue and having it under the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Services as he said it's not a job for municipalities or hamlet council to look after.

"We certainly need one around here. We do not have a morgue," he said. "We have a facility out there, but for some strange reason the health board will not allow us to store cadavers and coffins with bodies in them."

Because of that situation, the hamlet stores bodies in a cooling unit it has, he added.

"It doesn't give dignity to the individuals passing because right now, our municipal personnel – the ones that drive water and sewage trucks -- they are obliged to pick up that body, transport it and store it in undignified place because the morgue Health and Social Services has is not available to us," he said. "And Health and Social Services refuse to do their duty in looking after this deceased person."

Kugluktuk is looking to renovate its existing morgue and make it more suitable, said deputy mayor Grant Newman.

"It's a little awkward. The building has been turned from one use to the morgue use," he said.

Every community should have its own morgue, he said, to allow families time to prepare funeral arrangements while storing bodies "safely and with dignity."

The bodies of people who die in Iqaluit are stored at the Qikiqtani Regional Hospital's morgue. The hospital also uses its old morgue on occasion, such as when the new one needs maintenance, for coroner's cases or when there are a lot of bodies.

"It is worthwhile, without a doubt, to have adequate facilities in place to handle the storage of a body until such point in time a burial can be arranged," said Iqaluit Mayor Madeleine Redfern. "The City of Iqaluit, recognizing we have our own morgues, supports the other communities having adequate facilities to handle the storage of bodies."

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