Physician-assisted death became legal in Canada a decade ago, and more than 76,000 people availed themselves of the procedure between 2016 and 2024, according to data compiled by The Globe and Mail.
Over the years, the federal government has amended and expanded medical assistance in dying to include not just people whose death was reasonably foreseeable, but to those living with an incurable condition when their quality of life no longer felt sustainable.
MAID will be expanded next year to those whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, unless Ottawa legislates a delay for the third time.
Behind the law, there is a more human side to the story in the voices of those who have chosen assisted death and the reflections of their loved ones and friends who’ve supported the decision or disagreed with it.
The Globe and Mail has collected five of those accounts.
Tom Campbell earned many professional accolades in his 83 years, and served as deputy minister of health in Ontario in the 1980s. He had a loving family and many friends. Most of all, he aspired to be kind.
Mary Mogford remembers his wit, care and confidence. They spent 41 years of their lives together.
“Everybody says this about a loved partner, but he was a very remarkable person,” Ms. Mogford recalls.
Mr. Campbell was a fervent supporter of the 2016 MAID law. He believed it was a basic human right to decide how one wishes to die.
The following year, as he faced bladder cancer, he knew he wanted to end his life with the help of his physician.
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Mr. Campbell and his children on a family vacation to England. Mary Mogford/Supplied
Mr. Campbell also wanted this spelled out in his obituary , a rare move at that time. In it, MAID was described as a “wonderfully humanitarian addition to the health system which he had once led.”
“He wanted to help others understand it’s their basic human right to have MAID if they wish to die with dignity,” Ms. Mogford says.
In the early days of MAID, she remembers the challenge for Mr. Campbell to find a health care provider to administer the procedure.
Eventually, he was successful, but he saw MAID as an insurance policy of sorts; he hoped to stay alive many months longer.
Instead, excruciating pain broke through as cancer advanced to his lymph nodes. He then prepared for MAID at his Newcastle, Ont., home on Sept. 3. Mr. Campbell was not afraid of death.
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Beyond his professional achievements in public service, Mr. Campbell was a lifelong skier who took to the slopes until the age of 82. Courtesy of Mary Mogford
“He said, ‘If you could go into a deep, dreamless sleep from which you wouldn’t wake up, why would you be afraid of that?’ He didn’t want to leave us, but he didn’t want to stay with unbearable pain,” Ms. Mogford says.
On his last morning alive, he got out of bed and dressed in a blue blazer and white shirt. A ceremony unfolded in his living room, where he was surrounded by close friends.
Afterward, Mr. Campbell, his wife and his two children, John and Alexandra, went into the household den, a comfortable space where he had retreated while in considerable pain.
There, Dr. Ed Weiss was waiting to administer the procedure.
Dr. Weiss said: “‘You understand, Tom, that the injection I’m going to give you is going to end your life,’ ” Ms. Mogford recalls. “Tom said: ‘At last.’ ” The family held each other.
“If death can be beautiful, it was beautiful.”
– Kristy Kirkup
In the month leading up to her death, the effervescent Audrey Parker would lie in her king-sized bed known as The Bed of Truth.
From there, the 57-year-old divorcee spoke candidly, sharing frank advice with her family and closest friends at her side – including her views on how to choose the right romantic partner.
“We would sit and have a little sip of wine,” her long-time friend Kim King recalls. “Audrey was somebody who could read people really well. She often would give advice that maybe others wouldn’t, but you knew you needed to hear.”
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Ms. Parker reads a letter from a stranger who followed her journey online. She told The Globe at the time that she was happy to see her message was having an effect. Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Parker, a makeup artist, was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in 2016 that eventually spread to her brain. Knowing death was near, Ms. Parker wanted MAID so she could have final say over how her life ended.
While she qualified for the procedure, patients at that time were legally required to give late-stage consent before a doctor or nurse practitioner could administer the cocktail of life-ending drugs.
Ms. Parker feared, with cancer in her brain, that she would lose her capacity to consent. Instead, she chose to die early.
Someone who loved beautiful items and was known to have a fierce sense of style, Ms. Parker curated every aspect of her final day at her Halifax apartment on Nov. 1, 2018.
She was served lobster eggs Benedict b…
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