Case reference: MAID-ON-2020-8YYZ · Toronto, Ontario · Died by MAID · Recorded by the register as a MAID victim
Who she was
Nancy Russell was 90 and lived in a care home in Toronto. By every account she was exceptional for her age. “My mother was extremely curious, and she was very interested in every person she met and every idea that she came across so she was constantly reading, going to different shows and talks,” her daughter Tory told CTV News. “Being mobile was everything to my mom.” She walked to the library and did her own shopping.
Her obituary remembered her this way: “Ever adventurous, Nancy departed this world with her wits intact and her expansive curiosity tempered only by a willingness to let the mystery be.”
What happened
When COVID-19 reached Canada’s care homes, Nancy’s facility confined residents to their rooms for two-week isolation periods. As lockdowns stretched on, Tory says her mother declined. “She was just drooping,” she said. “It was contact with people that was like food to her, it was like oxygen.”
Facing a second wave of lockdowns and a Canadian winter, Nancy asked for MAID. The first doctor refused, telling her she had “too much to live for.” When she applied again, Tory says, she had developed “more concrete medical health” issues, and she was approved. She left the care home, which was in full lockdown, to spend eight days with her family at one of her children’s homes. On 20 October 2020, surrounded by family and friends holding her hands and singing the song she chose, she died by MAID.
Why they were pushed toward MAID
In her daughter’s account, the isolation of lockdown hastened Nancy’s death. Tory is clear that her mother supported MAID and had told her family doctor she wanted it at some point: “But the application was hastened by the impact of the lockdown measures. She just truly did not believe that she wanted to try another one of those two-week confinements into her room.”
Geriatrician Dr. Samir Sinha told CTV that depriving older people of contact and activity “can have significant psychological consequences that can really give people no real will to live anymore.” A MAID assessor, Dr. Susan Woolhouse, called lockdowns “an accelerator, not a cause” of some requests.
What their family says
Tory’s view of her mother’s death is not one of regret. “She was able to direct a peaceful, pain-free death on her own time and avoid a great fear of hers, which was to endure winter and lockdowns,” she said.
She also said something that should trouble anyone who cares for the elderly: “Her facility was in full lockdown at that time. We would not have been able to visit her in her facility. She had to leave.”
What this case shows
Nancy Russell’s family honours her choice, and so do we. But her story also shows that isolation imposed by an institution can bring a death forward. When a sociable 90-year-old’s only escape from confinement to her room is MAID, that should concern everyone responsible for how older Canadians are cared for.
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