Goudge Inquiry: Dr. Smith's Office: Part Three;

"THERE WERE SOME TISSUES, YOU KNOW, THAT WERE DRIED OUT IN PLASTIC CONTAINERS. THERE WAS SOME --SORT OF JUST SOME SKELETAL BONES IN ANOTHER LITTLE DISH. THERE WAS A LITTLE, SORT OF, WRIST BEAD. THOSE KIDS --THE CHILDREN WHO WERE USUALLY SICK; THEY MAKE BEADS FOR THEIR WRISTS, SO EACH TIME THEY HAVE A PROCEDURE, YOU ADD A BEAD; THERE WAS ONE OF THOSE."

MAXINE JOHNSON TO THE GOUDGE INQUIRY; DECEMBER 17, 2007;

Previous postings indicated that Dr. Charles Smith's office at the Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto was a chaotic mess.

(See previous postings: Dr. Smith's office Part One, and Dr. Smith's office Part Two (The photo));

Although Smith's superiors at the Hospital and senior officials of the Chief Coroner's office were regularly exposed to this mess - and he was often losing exhibits and failing to produce key forensic exhibits in a timely fashion - Smith was never ordered to clean it up during his two decades at the hospital.

The Goudge an inquiry has now heard a first hand description of Dr. Smith's office from Maxine Johnson, who was a member of a secretarial pool that assisted the Hospital's pathologists.

"There were some tissues, you know, that were dried out in plastic containers," Johnson told Commissioner Stephen Goudge.

"There was some -- sort of just some skeletal bones in another little dish.

There was a little, sort of, a wrist bead.

Those kids -- the children who were usually sick; they make these beads for their wrists, so each time they have a procedure, you add a bead; there was one (1) of those."

Johnson also noted that there were "(tissue) blocks from police evidence that, you know, usually is not in a pathologist's office..." - and she described a clutter of "opened and unopened correspondence."

Johnson testified that she was so troubled by the state of Smith's office that she once asked one of her colleagues to take a photo of it so that Smith might be encouraged to clean up his act through a here is how it looked like then and here is how it looks like now process.

But the transcript of her evidence indicates that this initiative came to no avail:


Mr. Robert Centa (Commission lawyer): And did you show him
those photos?

MS. MAXINE JOHNSON: Yes.

MR. ROBERT CENTA: And did it have the
desired affect?

MS. MAXINE JOHNSON: No.

MR. ROBERT CENTA: And Dr. Smith ever ask
you to clean up his office?

MS. MAXINE JOHNSON: No.

MR. ROBERT CENTA: Did anyone ever ask you
to clean up his office?

MS. MAXINE JOHNSON: Yes.

MR. ROBERT CENTA: What reasons did those
people give?

MS. MAXINE JOHNSON: Usually it's because, you know, we needed to find slides of cases that had not been signed out by Dr. Smith and so now there was an urgency to get those cases signed out. And someone else was -- you know, another pathologist was willing to sign the cases out, but of course you had to first find the slides and the paperwork that went with the report in
order to do that.

Johnson's account of the dried out tissue samples in plastic containers, skeletal bones in a little dish, and beads that once adorned dead children's wrists, scattered through Smith's office, makes me wonder about the reverence Dr. Smith often professed towards his work on dead children - especially to reporters;

How could anyone one who had respect for these young children allow their their body parts to be left hanging so anonymously around his office, along with whatever else he may have been hoarding in that cluttered space over the years?

Dr. Smith also professed to be a religious person - to the point of listing some of his religious affiliations in his Curriculum Vitae.

Could any truly religious person treat dead children and their families like this?

Next posting: How Maxine Johnson discovered the missing Mullins-Johnson forensic exhibits; A first-person account;

Harold Levy; hlevy15@gmail.com;