Three weeks on and the family of William James Woodward still have no answers for what will happen to his body in Brazil.
“It’s almost torturous to have to endure three weeks of setbacks,” Matthew Shepley, the Ontario-based son of the 66-year-old Hamilton native, said Friday.
The family is paying at least a $100 a day to keep Woodward’s body in a Rio de Janeiro morgue, after Woodward was shot and killed in Macae, Brazil, about 180 kilometres north of Rio, on April 7.
The politically active Woodward had retired to Brazil 14 years ago from British Columbia, moving from city to city teaching English.
When the cost of repatriating his body shot up to a minimum of $30,000 from an initial estimate of $10,000, the family began “exploring all options.”
That meant looking for burial options, despite Woodward’s wishes to be buried next to his father and brother in Hamilton.
But nothing beyond two- and three-year storage rentals for a body could be found.
The family isn’t sure why below-ground burial sites weren’t available, Shepley said.
Shepley says the list of concerns he has about deaths in a foreign country is growing by the day.
Canada’s fund for victims abroad is set to refund a maximum of $10,000 of the costs, a number that isn’t reflective of the escalating expenses his family is facing, Shepley said.
The family, he added, is also struggling with bureaucratic red tape, having recently paid a local contact to attend Rio court for four days for a simple modification of Woodward’s death certificate.
Cremation of the body, which is required as it was not cooled properly for a period of time, and so is not suitable for transport to Canada, would also require special permission.
Shepley wants the Canadian government to become more involved in the investigations by demanding its own autopsy or at least spending time looking into the coroner’s report and police investigation, “so we can be satisfied that agencies around the world are not just sweeping crimes against Canadians under the rug.”
Local Liberal MP Bob Bratina said he has been in contact with Woodward’s relatives, but pointed out there was little future legislative changes could do to meet the family’s more immediate needs.
Bratina declined to comment further on the process.
“I don’t think waiting three weeks or a month is reasonable,” Shepley said. “The family would like to have him laid to rest so we can take care of each other and get our lives back on track.”
The family has set up a gofundme campaign (gofundme.com/2h64vf7g) to help alleviate the cost of returning Woodward’s body.
