Case reference: MAID-BC-2021-P68E · Victoria, British Columbia · Died by MAID · Recorded by the register as a MAID victim
Who he was
John Lyon lived in Victoria, British Columbia. He was a father, and in his last years he lived on a low income, mostly from the Canada Pension Plan. His son, Dr. Christopher Lyon, now a researcher at the University of York and a visiting fellow at the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society, has told Parliament what happened to him.
His family says he had struggled for years with depression and with bouts of strong suicidal thinking that came during upheavals in his life, such as losing his business, a marital separation and moving house.
What happened
After a series of falls and hospital stays, social services found John Lyon an urgent place in an assisted living residence. His son says he was “very anxious about how much assisted living would cost.” He moved in on the first day of the record-setting heat dome that hit B.C. in 2021. Five days later he fell in his new apartment; his son wrote that he was left on the floor for six or seven hours before an ambulance could reach him. On the seventh day, as the heat dome broke, he received a lethal injection in a Victoria hospital. He was 77.
He had been approved for Track 2 MAID for “rheumatoid arthritis, frailty, recent falls, chronic pain and conditions he often coped with,” his son testified. Halfway through the mandatory 90-day assessment period, his providers labelled him Track 1, a foreseeable natural death, three days before he died. His medical certification of death indicates the track change was for “early sepsis NYD,” medical shorthand for “not yet diagnosed.”
His son says the family sent the local MAID coordinator a document detailing his father’s history of mental illness and suicidal ideation. A last-minute psychiatric assessment was arranged. “I pressed for a last-minute psychiatric assessment and was told the psychiatrist would just agree with the provider. They were right,” he told the committee. He says the assessment “denied suicidality, minimized his history of depression, denied he was a smoker and claimed he’d been living in his assisted living flat for a month, not four or five days.” He also testified that his father was allowed to drink wine the evening before and the day of his death while on several psychotropic medications, and that “‘Get me out of here’ was the flimsy assent interpreted as his final consent.”
Why they were pushed toward MAID
John Lyon was pushed toward MAID at the most dangerous point in his life: a forced move he could barely afford, a fall, a heat wave, and a mind his family knew turned to suicide in exactly these moments. “When he found out about MAID, he told me a doctor told him he should have it,” his son testified. “The heat crisis, combined with the move to assisted living, was absolutely in keeping with when he would struggle with his mental health the most.”
His son also testified: “His provider told me he’d probably just kill himself anyway.” The family’s warnings about suicidality did not stop the death; the track change cut the 90-day safeguard in half. When the family later sought his records, they obtained only a partly redacted copy of his psychiatric evaluation and his medical death certificate. “B.C.’s system is a pinball machine of deflection among colleges, police and coroners,” his son told Parliament. No police investigation or charges are known.
What their family says
“My dad, John Lyon, lost his life to a MAID provider in Victoria, B.C., in July 2021, one week after he moved into an assisted living apartment,” Christopher Lyon told the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying in April 2026. “I cannot begin to describe the horror.”
Writing earlier about the day his father died, he recalled trying to change his father’s mind in a moment alone together, and asking afterward whether “anyone in the process had tried to save his life.”
What this case shows
John Lyon was a vulnerable, suicidal, low-income 77-year-old in crisis. His family raised the alarm, and the system moved him onto the faster track. His case shows how Canada’s safeguards can be shortened exactly when a person most needs them, and how families who warn of suicide risk are shut out.
Sources
- House of Commons, Special Joint Committee on MAID: Evidence No. 004 (45th Parliament), 21 April 2026 – testimony of Dr. Christopher Lyon
- Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Dying Indignity. Witnessing my father’s medically assisted death.
- National Post: Researcher argues health-care serial killer could take advantage of Canada’s assisted dying program
- House of Commons, Special Joint Committee on MAID: Brief submitted by Christopher Lyon, PhD (May 2022)
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