Son of woman who inspired assisted dying law chooses to die on his own terms

Price Carter, son of Kay Carter, speaks at a press conference on doctor-assisted death legislation, Bill C-14, while his sister, Lee Carter, and Josh Paterson, Executive Director, BC Civil Liberties Association listen on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, April 21, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle

OTTAWA — Price Carter is planning to die this summer.

The 68-year-old has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He knows it will take his life eventually; before it does, he intends to die on his own terms with his family at his side.

“I was told at the outset, ‘This is palliative care, there is no cure for this.’ So that made it easy,” he said in an interview from his home in Kelowna, B.C.

Carter said he’s always known that medical assistance in dying would be an option “that I would exercise if I could, if needed to.”

He has that option, in large part, because of his mother.

Kay Carter’s name is on the landmark Supreme Court of Canada case that gave Canadians the right to choose a medically assisted death just over a decade ago.

Price has finished a first assessment and said he expects the second assessment deeming him eligible for the procedure to be completed this week. He spoke openly and calmly about his final days and his decision to end his life.

“I’m at peace with this, I truly am, and I would have been years ago,” he said.

It’s been nearly a year since he first started experiencing symptoms and got a diagnosis. Until a couple of months ago, he said, he was swimming and rowing. He and his wife Danielle went golfing recently, playing best ball.

“She dragged me down that course,” he said with a laugh.

But his energy is starting to fade. He knows how he wants the next step to unfold.

It was more than 15 years ago that Price, along with his sisters Marie and Lee and his brother-in-law Hollis, surreptitiously made their way to Switzerland to be with their mother on her final day.

The 89-year-old was living with spinal stenosis and chose to go to a non-profit facility that provided medically assisted death. She became the 10th Canadian to do so.

At the time, assisted death was illegal in Canada.

Kay Carter wrote a letter explaining her decision and her family helped draft a list of about 150 people to send it to after she died. She couldn’t tell them her plans in advance because of the risk that Canadian authorities would try to stop her from going to Switzerland, or prosecute the family members who helped her.

When she got to the Dignitas facility, she finalized the paperwork, settled in a bed and chased down the barbiturate that would stop her heart with Swiss chocolate.

“When she died, she just gently folded back,” Price said.

After a few minutes, one of the attendants from the facility walked over to the door, “and the curtains billow out, and she says, ‘There, her spirit is free,’” he said.

“If I was writing the movie, I wouldn’t change that.”

He said the memory makes him cry today, though not from sadness. The cancer, and the treatment, have made him emotional — the experience itself was beautiful.

“I wish for my children that they can see my death like I did my mom’s,” he said. He said wants his wife, Danielle, and his kids to be there.

His children — Lane, Grayson and Jenna — live in Ontario. They’re all busy, he said, so when the time is right he’ll try to find a date that works for everyone.

For now, he’s doing a lot of reading.

“I’m just gonna keep hanging on, day by day, and enjoying my Danielle.”

The Carter family had a long road after Kay’s death in January 2010.

Her eldest daughter Lee was the driving force behind taking the case to the Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous decision in early 2015 that struck down sections of the Criminal Code that made it illegal to help someone end their life.

In 2016, the federal government passed legislation that created the country’s regime for medical assistance in dying and made it legal for people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable” to apply for an assessment.

After a 2019 ruling in the Quebec Superior Court found it was unconstitutional to restrict assisted dying to people whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable, the Liberal government updated the law in 2021.

That update included a controversial clause that would allow people suffering solely from a mental disorder to be considered eligible for an assisted death. The proposed change caused widespread worry among provinces and some mental health professionals, and has now been delayed until March 2027.

In the meantime, Health Canada has been studying what Canadians think of allowing people to ask for medical assistance in dying through an advance request.

Advance requests would allow people with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or other degenerative conditions to make the application and decide when they’d like to end their lives.

Price Carter said that change “is such a simple thing to do.”

“We’re excluding a huge number of Canadians from a MAID option because they may have dementia and they won’t be able to make that decision in three or four or two years. How frightening, how anxiety-inducing that would be,” he said.

He admitted to feeling frustrated at the pace of change, though he said he knows his “laissez-faire” attitude toward death is uncommon.

Helen Long, the president of Dying With Dignity Canada, said numerous federal consultations have shown there’s broad support for advance requests dating back to 2016.

“We’re continuing to advocate and ask our new government … to make advance requests legal for Canadians,” she said.

Quebec has passed legislation to allow people with serious and incurable illnesses to apply for a medically assisted death in the event that they become incapacitated through an advance request.

Marjorie Michel, who was recently named health minister in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new government, said in an interview that it’s a question of balance.

“It’s so personal for people, and I think in some provinces they are not there yet,” she said.

But when asked if the government plans to allow advance requests, she deferred to her colleague in the Justice Department. A spokesperson for Justice Minister Sean Fraser said Michel would be best positioned to respond.

Health Canada is set to release a report with the key findings from its consultations on the matter this spring.

Medical assistance in dying is becoming more common in Canada. In 2023, the latest year for which national statistics are available, 19,660 people applied for the procedure and just over 15,300 people were approved.

More than 95 per cent of those were people whose deaths were considered reasonably foreseeable.

Price Carter said he wants to talk about his condition because he wants Canadians to talk about death, as uncomfortable as it is.

“The more conversations we can spawn around kitchen tables, the better,” he said.

“We’re all going to die. It’s part of the condition of living. And yet we do ignore this, to our peril.”

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press