Dear Editor:
A month ago I received a call from a friend of mine that I had not heard from in a while.
Brian told me about a fellow student that my husband and I had known as students at the Ontario College of Art. Our friend, Peter, had called me after my husband had died four years ago, and talked to me for an hour about my husband Mike and old times at the college, taking me “way back when” and making me feel so much better, even though I hadn’t seen him for several years.
Peter had always been a fireball, full of energy and vigour; passionate about his art; always positive and excited about life. He also loved sports of all kinds, and even as a young student, took good care of himself. He played football with a group from our class in the Grange Park behind the college.
They also went on painting trips together (like the Group of Seven). He became a teacher at the Ontario College of Art while at the same time, had a successful career as an artist.
Brian told me that Peter, who had been up north at his cottage a few months ago, had dove off his dock into the water and hit his head on a rock. This action made him a paraplegic. He lived for six weeks and then asked for medically assisted dying.
Who among us would have told Peter that it was against God’s wishes to allow him to go through with his decision? The God I know certainly would not have deprived him. After all, wasn’t it God who gave us all a free will in the first place?
In my opinion medical assistance in dying should not be accessible for children, teenagers or people with depression. In my own family there were four people with depression in their youth, including myself, and we have all recovered and have become happy, well adjusted, productive members of society.
Christy Doraty,
Fergus