Dying to get in

>> >> A visit to the Montreal morgue

by SIAMAC MAHBOUBIAN

The smell emerging from a morgue is one of those distinct odours; its stale scent beckoning from beyond the grave to haunt those of us still breathing.

Enter 1701 Parthenais, corner of Ontario. A tall, cold, steel and glass structure, it is the Sureté du Québec's head office in Montreal. There are a lot of dead people in the basement. But you wouldn't be able to tell that if you were standing in the lobby, waiting for your visitor's pass.

Such passes, if you can get them, are swiped across card slots, granting access through two separate electronic security gates àla so many big-budget action movies. An armed SQ officer guards the elevators.

This path is routinely taken by members of the Quebec Coroner's Office. Less routinely, a visitor will come in to identify a body, pay their final respects, or write an article.

When the elevator doors open, visitors and habitués of this most morbid of environments are assaulted by the aforementioned smell. Now there's no mistaking it: there's definitely something dead nearby.

The stench is something like a combination of bleach vapours, stale urine and deep-fried fish. Add a waft of curdled milk and some formaldehyde, and you have the morgue.

"You should smell it in the summer," says Francois Houle, public relations officer for the Coroner's Office. "The heat makes it much stronger."

White walls surround a blue door, while the floor is painted red. Perhaps to mask bloodstains, or maybe to liven up the morbid atmosphere; no one seems to know why. And there are the fridges.

"They're essentially like beer fridges--same doors, same temperature," says Houle, referring to the basic cubicles where corpses are stored. "We can fit about 150 to 200 [bodies] easily," says Phillipe Landry, a clerk at the morgue. "If we get stuck, we can stack 'em to the ceiling."

Breaking down the clientele

According to the latest stats from the Coroner, there were 53,554 deaths in Quebec in '98. Of these, 4,521 deceased ended up at this institution. "There are usually about 50,000 deaths per year in Quebec," estimates Houle. "We get about 5,000 a year."

The Montreal City Morgue has a select clientele. Those 5,000 are almost exclusively people who died under unnatural circumstances: murders, suicides, work and automobile-related deaths. The facility also serves as the only coroner's laboratory in the province. Basically, if the death doesn't appear to be kosher, the body ends up here.

"Doctors can issue death certificates," says Houle, referring to deaths that occur naturally, such as those due to old age. "Otherwise, the expertise and personnel needed to conduct proper autopsies are all here," he continues. "We have biochemists, DNA experts, an expert in drownings, a plane crash expert."

The morgue is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The standard drill: bodies arrive via truck, usually delivered by morticians or drivers employed by the Coroner's Office, as you need a license to haul dead people. A garage is attached to the morgue, where daily deliveries are made. "Death has a pretty steady frequency," says Houle.

Bodies are unloaded, undressed, weighed, measured and photographed with a Polaroid. Pockets and purses are emptied, personal belongings are sealed away in ziplocs and a list of these belongings is verified and signed by both the driver and a morgue employee on duty. Bodies are then hauled off to be refrigerated, and eventually autopsied.

Identifying the stiffs

"Autopsies can take an hour or they can take two days," says Houle. "Obviously, if someone's got a bullet hole on their forehead, it won't take too long to find the cause of death. Essentially, a coroner has to answer the same questions as a journalist: they need to know the who, what, when, where, why and how of a death."

If a body is unidentified, by law, the morgue has to hold it for 30 days. After that time, if the body is still unidentified, it is buried at government expense. The cost is approximately $250.

"It's really a basic burial. A box but no ceremony," says Houle. Unidentified corpses are no longer donated to medical schools, although this was standard practice in the past.

The morgue advertises in various media outlets in an attempt to reunite the unidentified deceased with their families during the 30-day holding period. Identified bodies are usually released to funeral homes or crematoriums within 48 hours of their arrival at the morgue.

"Death tends to be pretty steady," says Landry. "We get different kinds of deaths during different seasons, otherwise, the numbers are relatively similar." Adds Houle, "We get very few snowmobile deaths in the summer, for example."

"We usually do get a surge during the first week of the month," concludes Landry. "That's because landlords come knocking for the rent and end up finding deceased elderly tenants." :

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