Making a virtue of adversity

On the way down to the autopsy room in the basement, Dr Jim Cairns makes a number of macabre jokes about death in his Northern Ireland accent. "Gallows humour," he calls it. There's no disrespect intended. "But you need to have a sense of humour in a place like this," he stresses, pointing to a large sign that reads: "Welcome to forensic pathology".

Further along, there is a life-size plastic skeleton wearing underwear and a tie with a sign hanging around its neck reading: "Say hi to Barry".

Perhaps it is this comic defence mechanism that gives a coroner the stomach to face another dead body, this time an elderly man found overnight in a city apartment surrounded by 12 empty whiskey bottles. Or perhaps it's the strange irony of his own circumstances and how he escaped the rise of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles by emigrating to Canada.

In Toronto, he became deputy chief coroner with special responsibility for briefing the media on murder and mortality in the city.

People know his face from his frequent television appearances, and they trust him. You can't help thinking that the affectionate duality of private humour and genuine public compassion have something to do with his Irish background. It was the time of the Civil Rights marches when Jim Cairns, a young Catholic medical student at Queen's University, decided to leave Belfast. Brought up in Newcastle, Co Down, it was not simply a matter of economic migration, but something to do with the prevailing sectarian mood.

At Queen's, he fell in love with a fellow medical student, Jenny Black, a Protestant. To make matters worse, her father, Sir Harold Black, had links with the unionist establishment. He was secretary to the cabinet, from Terence O'Neill right up to the time of Brian Faulkner and the collapse of Stormont.

British troops had begun to appear on the streets and the North was descending into the bitterness from which it is only now waking up. Parents on both sides were deeply set against the marriage. Everything that was happening in Northern Ireland at the time seemed against it, so they decided to leave and make their lives in Toronto instead.

"The whole thing was very difficult for her father and I felt sorry for him," says Dr Cairns. "As a senior civil servant, Sir Harold was very much involved in Northern Ireland politics and it must have been a blow. My mother was also less than enchanted with the fact that her son was marrying a Protestant." Dr Cairns's father had died in a car accident when he was a boy.

IN Canada, the same sectarian discrimination still haunted the streets of Toronto, with memories of large loyalist marches on the Twelfth of July in the city, as well as in rural towns all around Ontario. But the growing multi-cultural tolerance of Canadian society and Toronto, with large Greek, Italian, Indian and Asian districts, and its majority non-white, non-European population, was the perfect place to escape from religious hatred.

Identity and national pride are not hidden. The sense of ethnic belonging is encouraged to co-exist with the larger Canadian identity. Everyone in Toronto seems to be from somewhere else. The Chinese district, for instance, has Chinese street signs and you can find yourself asked for the fare on the bus in Chinese. Sikh policemen are entitled to wear turbans instead of police caps.

It was the right place for a Catholic and Protestant to get married, says Dr Cairns. Parents and friends on both sides attended an ecumenical service with a Catholic priest and a United Church minister present.

"Maybe we did it for our parents. The rules were very strict then, you had to sign an agreement that all of the children would be brought up as Catholics. The experience didn't do much for me. As they say, there are Catholics and then there are Irish Catholics." His wife, Jenny, also works as a doctor in Toronto. They have three children and return to Northern Ireland regularly. Because of the peace process, Dr Cairns finds it easier to put the place and the atmosphere they left behind into perspective.

"As many as 40 from our class in medicine came to Canada in 1969, when all the bullets and bombs started," he says. Ironically, he found that he was in demand in Canada because he seemed to be the only one around with knowledge of gunshot wounds.

Clinical forensic medicine is not part of the Canadian medical curriculum, so the pathology lectures at Queen's put Dr Cairns on a direct course for the autopsy room, first as an investigative pathologist and eventually as Toronto's deputy chief coroner in 1991.

In Canada, even though he will not say it himself, Dr Cairns has become a bit of a celebrity. He's frequently in the news, giving details about the circumstances surrounding a death and asking for help from the public. He has an affability and openness in his manner that characterises the Canadian way of dealing with sensitive information surrounding death.

"We are very open to involvement with the media. As far as I am concerned if you are a publicly-funded organisation, then what are you hiding?

"Confidentiality is one thing - hiding another. People think that the room where an inquest takes place is a dirty little hole with maggots. Look around you, it's so spotless you could eat lunch in here. I prefer to think of it as an operating room for the dead."

As many as 120 bodies are stored here. Some, known as the John or Jane Does, have not been identified, and have been in storage for several years. There is one girl here who was found in a suitcase, murdered and badly burnt.

Dr Cairns sees people dying in the prime of life all the time and, although he has a stoically professional approach to his work, there are occasions that get him down.

"Most of the time we tend to talk in scientific terms, but it all seems to break down when you see a child homicide. People say `God, are you ever upset? You guys are so tough.' In fact, it's a relief that we get upset, that you sometimes see hardened homicide officers with tears in their eyes. You say to yourself, `Thank God we're human'."