Case reference: MAID-ON-2022-4B8G · Toronto, Ontario · Died by MAID · Recorded by the register as a MAID victim
Who she was
The woman known publicly as “Sophia” was 51 and lived in Toronto. She asked her friends to use that pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy. She lived with multiple chemical sensitivities. Cigarette smoke and the scent of chemical cleaners made her sick, which is recognized in Canada as a disability that requires accommodation in some settings. She was cared for at Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital and had friends who fought alongside her to the end.
Those friends, at the Environmental Health Association of Québec, described her as “a kind, loving, and compassionate person who is always willing to help people around her.” She was an integral part of the association and, they wrote, “always works hard in order to protect people with disabilities, no matter the situation in her personal life.”
She lived at the Salvation Army’s Grace Communities apartments, where, according to reporting on her case, she was exposed to the triggers that made her ill. Like many people with disabilities, she spent even more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What happened
For two years, Sophia and her friends looked for affordable housing that was free of tobacco smoke and chemical cleaners. They appealed to the federal government, the Ontario government and the City of Toronto, and nothing worked. As reporting on her case noted, no government agency in Canada is responsible for helping people with environmental sensitivities find housing.
From October 2019 she was confined to a single sealed room of her apartment, which she called her “dungeon.” In her own words, the rest of the apartment “REEKS of both cigarette/marijuana smoke and scented personal care/laundry/cleaning products, leaching in from other tenants’ apartments.” According to letters she provided to CTV News, the landlord sealed the vents in her bedroom but refused further accommodations. On 20 October 2021, four Toronto doctors, including those who later provided her MAID, wrote to government officials: “We physicians find it unconscionable that no other solution is proposed to this situation, other than Medical Assistance in Dying.” Inclusion Canada reports that no one answered. When her friends learned on 27 January 2022 that her death was scheduled, they launched an emergency GoFundMe and raised about $12,000 for a move, but by then her date was set.
Sophia avoided the media while she was alive, because she feared publicity would get in the way of her access to MAID. She died by MAID on 22 February 2022, under the expanded eligibility rules passed in March 2021. Reports describe her as the first person in the world known to have received MAID in connection with multiple chemical sensitivities. CTV News told her story on 13 April 2022. Her health care provider later raised the case in testimony to Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on MAID, and the committee referred to it in its final report.
Why they were pushed toward MAID
According to Sophia and the people who supported her, what she needed was a home. The sources describe a woman who believed a clean, affordable place to live would ease her suffering, and who could not get one. Her income did not stretch to private housing that met her needs, and the public system had nowhere suitable to offer her.
Rohini Peris, president of the Environmental Health Association of Québec, described what happened: “This person begged for help for years, two years, wrote everywhere, called everywhere, asking for healthy housing.” These are Sophia’s own account and that of her advocates. No official review has examined why she received MAID.
What their family says
Sophia left her own words. On 14 February 2022, eight days before she died, she recorded a video and asked friends to share it after her death: “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the ass.”
In a letter to officials she wrote that her landlord “does not believe anything is wrong with me, and refuses to do anything else to help me…” and: “I have given up hope and have applied for — and now qualify for — MAID.”
Her friends’ fundraiser put it plainly: “It’s not that Sophia wants to die – it’s that she cannot continue living like this.” They honoured her wish to stay anonymous, and spoke out so that her story would be told.
What this case shows
Sophia did not ask to die because her condition could not be helped. She asked because the help she needed, a safe and affordable home, never came. When the housing system has no answer and MAID does, it is not really a free choice. Her case sits at the centre of the debate over whether Canada is letting disabled people die for lack of support.
Sources
- CTV News: Woman with chemical sensitivities chose medically-assisted death after failed bid to get better housing
- GoFundMe (organized by her friends at the Environmental Health Association of Québec): Save Sophia’s Life! Sauver la vie de Sophia!
- Inclusion Canada: Remembering Sophia
- Wikipedia: Assisted suicide of Sophia
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