Evolution of the right- to- die movement in B. C.
1991: Right to Die Society of Canada created in Victoria.
1992: Sue Rodriguez, a 42- year- old Victoria woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease, fi les a lawsuit in B. C. Supreme Court asking for the right to a doctorassisted death. The B. C. court upholds Canada’s ban on assisted suicide.
1993: Rodriguez appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada, but loses on a 5- 4 split decision that said the existing law “is part of our fundamental conception of the sanctity of life” and there is no consensus on changing it. She committed suicide in 1994 with her friend then- NDP MP Svend Robinson of Burnaby in attendance. The unidentifi ed physician who helped her was never charged.
1994: Simon Fraser University criminology student Russel Ogden writes a controversial master’s thesis on euthanasia and assisted suicide among people with AIDS. He continues to research self- chosen death and is now a faculty member in criminology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Ogden founded the Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die in B. C. in 2011.
2004: Evelyn Martens of Victoria is found not guilty of helping two women commit suicide. The jury found there was not enough evidence to convict her in the deaths of Monique Charest in Duncan and Leyanne Burchell in Vancouver. Martens said she gave up on “comforting” people after the trial and died in 2011.
2007: Dr. Ramesh Kumar Sharma of Vernon goes on trial for trying to help a woman in her 90s who suff ered from heart problems commit suicide by prescribing her a deadly dose of drugs. He receives a conditional sentence of two years less a day to be served in the community and his licence is revoked.
2011: A court case launched by the B. C. Civil Liberties Association on behalf of two women with intractable and progressive diseases, Kay Carter and Gloria Taylor, challenged Canada’s prohibition on assisting suicide in the Criminal Code. ( Carter had already died by a prescribed drug overdose in a Swiss clinic with her family around her. Her daughter Lee Carter later went public calling for changes to Canadian laws. Taylor died, unaided, in 2012 while deteriorating from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.)
2012: B. C. Supreme Court rules that Criminal Code of Canada provisions against assisted dying violate the rights of the gravely ill and gave Parliament one year to rewrite the laws
2013: B. C. Court of Appeal rejects a lower court ruling in the Carter case after the federal and provincial governments intervene, saying the law protects vulnerable people. Two out of three justices of the Court of Appeal said the 20- year- old Rodriguez ruling is binding and could not be overturned.
August 2014: Gillian Bennett of Bowen Island gains world- wide attention with a blog called Dead at Noon that she wrote before taking a fatal dose of barbiturates.
Oct. 15, 2014: The Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal launched by the B. C. Civil Liberties Association on the Carter case.