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April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year. She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada’s increasingly liberal laws.
She is speaking to BBC News from the Bus Stop Theatre, an intimate auditorium with a little under 100 seats, in the eastern city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Illuminated by a single spotlight on a stage she has performed on many times before, she tells me she plans to die here “within months” of her imminent 40th birthday. She’ll be joined by a small group of her family and friends.
April was born with spina bifida and was later diagnosed with tumours at the base of her spine which she says have left her in constant, debilitating pain. She’s been taking strong opioid painkillers for more than 20 years and applied for Medical Assistance in Dying (Maid) in March 2023.
Before she was approved for Maid, April was assessed by two independent physicians who were required to inform her of ways to alleviate her suffering and offer alternative treatments.
April says she respects the decision of those who choose not to end their life, but for her, it’s about taking control. “I want to be surrounded by the people I love and just have everybody hold me in a giant cuddle puddle and get to take my last breath, surrounded by love and support,” she says.
There were 15,343 Maid deaths in 2023, representing around one in 20 of all deaths in Canada – a proportion that has increased dramatically since 2016.
Dr Ramona Coelho, a GP in London, Ontario, whose practice serves many marginalised groups and those struggling to get medical and social support, says she wants to help patients to live. “When people have suicidal ideations, we used to meet them with counselling and care, and for people with terminal illness and other diseases we could mitigate that suffering and help them have a better life,” she says. “Yet now we are seeing that as an appropriate request to die and ending their lives very quickly.”
Vicki Whelan, a retired nurse whose mum Sharon Scribner died in April 2023 of lung cancer, aged 81, told me that in her mum’s final days in hospital she was repeatedly offered the option of Maid by medical staff, describing it as like a “sales pitch”.
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