From hostility to hope: what I saw from the sidewalk at Life Chain

My column in Oct. 12 Edition of the BC Catholic.

The roar of the black car’s gunned engine did not drown out its male driver’s angry, shouted words as he sped past our Life Chain on the Moody Street sidewalk in front of St. Joseph’s church in Port Moody.

“Garbage,” he screamed. “Absolute f---ing garbage.”

It wasn’t the first such verbal assault we heard that afternoon in response to our pro-life placards, and it wasn’t the last, either.

But it was the one that got me thinking about how vulnerable we were as we stood there, protected only by our flimsy cardboard signs and our prayers.

Thoughts of April’s Lapu-Lapu Day massacre in Vancouver sprung to mind, followed closely by memories of vehicle-driving madmen mowing down pedestrians in countless terrorist attacks throughout the world.

It could happen here, I thought. And so, as our parish’s Life Chain organizer, I decided to pay closer attention to all incoming traffic. I was briefly concerned about one motorists who pulled a U-turn in the middle of the block, and was relieved to see he was simply looking for a parking space.

I also shifted the focus of my prayers from ones responding to the culture of death to ones about the safety of the three dozen men, women, and children standing alongside me.

As well, I prayed for the mental and spiritual welfare of the angry men and women who spewed hatred at us as they drove by.

It occurred to me that every one of the epithet-hurlers was opening a dialogue. I was proud that our contingent’s response in each instance was a silent, peaceful, and prayerful one. It must have frustrated the haters. Or maybe it gave them pause to reflect.

I’m no psychologist, but I know enough from introspection and from raising children that angry outbursts can be manifestations of guilt or unresolved issues. Maybe our non-confrontational, peaceful responses got them thinking about life issues in ways they didn’t anticipate. Let’s hope so.

As our hour neared its end, a serious-looking elderly gentleman on a personal-mobility scooter came zipping up the sidewalk towards us. I braced myself for a confrontation.

“What’s all this about?” he said. After I explained, his face brightened, and he told me that he was raised Baptist but certainly supported Catholics in our opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

In fact, he said, if abortion had been legal in England when his mother was pregnant, he would surely not be here today. “I’m glad I’m alive,” he said. “Thank-you for what you’re doing.”

We chatted for a few more minutes about how grateful he was to live in a nearby subsidized seniors’ residence, and I invited him to reach out to us if he ever needed anything.

As he turned and scooted away, I realized that the end of our exchange coincided with the conclusion our Life Chain hour. It was a good note to end on. As our group wrapped up, I thanked everyone for their participation and congratulated them for having the courage of their convictions.

We may never know what impact our demonstration had, I said, but we should be confident that it will be a positive one. When we put our faith into action, good must surely flourish.

Secret euthanasia house raises alarm in Victoria

My latest story, published in the BC Catholic newspaper, Oct.27, 2025

By Terry O'Neill

The furtive establishment of a standalone, private euthanasia house in Victoria has sparked criticism from pro-lifers and exposed yet another way in which medical assistance in dying is spreading throughout the country.

A Toronto-based non-profit called MAiDHouse opened the euthanasia facility at an undisclosed location in the provincial capital in February. It launched a Toronto MAiD house in 2021.

Euthanasia opponents are troubled by the under-the-radar expansion of MAiD facilities, especially since the unidentified houses may be in residential neighbourhoods. The MAiD houses appear to have the full backing of the federal government. Not only has the Canada Revenue Agency granted MAiDHouse, also known as Assisted-Dying Resource Centres Canada, full charity status, but Health Canada lists it as one of 10 national “resources.”

“I can’t figure out how an organization that kills people can be a charity,” said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. “Every time you think Canada’s MAiD pandemic can’t get worse, you learn that it’s reached a new low.”

Schadenberg said MAiDHouse portrays its facilities as comforting and friendly, “but it’s actually pretty insane if you think about it because they exist solely to kill people.”

MAiDHouse did not respond to repeated B.C. Catholic requests for comment about the Victoria facility’s location, whether it received permits or zoning approval from the city, or whether nearby residents are aware of its operation.

According to information published by MAiDHouse, “those eligible for MAiD, along with their supporters, come to MAiDHouse only on the day of their provision. Individuals meeting a potential MAiD provider for an assessment attend only on the day of that meeting, and may re-book the space for their provision if found eligible. Anyone considering booking MAiDHouse is also welcome to schedule a tour of the space in advance.”

The B.C. Catholic reached out to the City of Victoria for comment but received no reply. An online search did not show any Victoria business licences for 2025 in the name of MAiDHouse, Assisted-Dying Resource Centres Canada, or any employees or board members.

The secrecy and the silence are disconcerting, says Christian McCay, spokesman for Choose Life Victoria. “I am deeply disturbed that MAiDHouse has been quietly operating a standalone euthanasia house in Victoria,” McCay said in an emailed statement. “Finding out that it has been here for half a year without the public being told is in itself deeply wrong, to say the least.”

He noted that Victoria has long been seen as the euthanasia capital of the world, and MAiDHouse’s operating “only makes it worse.”

A spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria referred questions about MAiDHouse’s existence in the city to Bishop Gary Gordon’s 2022 pastoral letter on MAiD. In that letter, Bishop Gordon wrote, “The ideology of euthanasia (MAID) is understandable on many levels in contemporary society, as the experience of loss and abandonment is a powerful force of fear and anxiety.” He said Catholics cannot judge the level of such fear and anguish in a person who chooses euthanasia.

“However,” Bishop Gordon continued, “we can say unequivocally to the faithful Catholic people of God that choosing euthanasia (MAID) is never a choice that is the will of the Creator, as revealed in the sacred texts of divine revelation, the Word of God, and the constant teaching of the Catholic and Apostolic faith.”

In that letter, Bishop Gordon pointed to the parable of the Good Samaritan as a model for Christian response to suffering.

He noted that the Samaritan “did not offer to alleviate the suffering of the nearly-dead robbed person with euthanasia.” The commandment is clear, he said: “‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Our faith continues to clearly and unequivocally reject euthanasia and assisted suicide as a response to pain and suffering of body, mind, and soul.”

At the same time, Bishop Gordon acknowledged the fear and anguish that can drive a person toward MAiD. “The ideology of euthanasia is understandable on many levels in contemporary society, as the experience of loss and abandonment is a powerful force of fear and anxiety,” he wrote.

“But leaving a person abandoned by the side of the road of existence when robbed of health and strength is never the choice of a good neighbour or a just and caring civil society. Choosing euthanasia is never a choice that is the will of the Creator.”

Victoria pro-life advocate Marie Peeters-Ney, a member of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, was saddened by the news of MAiDHouse’s arrival in her community, but called it predictable.

“Once you start killing, there’s like a feeding frenzy, and it just gets bigger and bigger,” said Peeters-Ney, whose husband, prominent pro-life child and family psychiatrist Dr. Philip Ney, died in January. She said Canadians need to clear their heads of the “virtual reality” that allows them to condemn killing when it comes to the death penalty or genocide, while ignoring realities like MAiDHouse. “We are paying people to kill our loved ones.”

Vancouver podcaster Kelsi Sheren, a critic of Canada’s MAiD regime, devoted her July 15 show to MAiDHouse, saying its business model “thrives on nothing but despair.” Sheren, a Canadian Forces combat veteran, said MAiDHouse operators are morally bankrupt and are “predators at best” who practise “death care,” not health care. Christian McCay, the new leader of the Christian Heritage Party of B.C., in a YouTube interview with former leader Rod Taylor. (YouTube screen image) McCay, who was elected leader of the Christian Heritage Party of B.C. on Oct. 18, called for the provincial government to provide better care for the sick and the dying, including MAiD-free public hospices.

“True quality palliative care and medical care is being denied,” he said. “Instead, patients are being coerced, abandoned, and pressured to see death as their only option. That is not dignity, that is despair.”

According to the most recent Health Canada report, B.C. recorded 2,759 MAiD deaths in 2023, 18 per cent of Canada’s 15,343 total. The report also stated that, at 37.8 per cent, private residences were the most frequent location for MAiD deaths, followed by hospitals at 32.7 per cent.

Built to Coerce: Canada’s Living Laboratory of Euthanasia and the Call to Catholic Witness

The following article appeared in the Oct 14 edition of The Pulse, a publication of the Catholic Medical Association. In it, bioethicist Yuriko Ryan of Vancouver considers the ethical implications of the BC government's imposition on St. Paul's Hospital of "Shoreline Space," a MAiD facility. My story of earlir this year (below) was the first to identify the name and location of this euthanasia facility.

By Yuriko Ryan, DBe, MA, HEC-C

One summer morning my husband and I stepped into a Catholic hospital through a main entrance we both knew well. It was where he was born, where he practiced almost daily as a family physician for 35 years, where we returned to countless specialist visits, outpatient appointments, palliative care meetings with dear friends, and the joy of welcoming babies in the maternity ward. For us, the hospital was a constant holy presence, an unwavering witness to the dignity of life.

But this visit brought something unexpected into view. On the left wall, a new mural of muted mountains and shoreline scenes quietly caught our attention. There were no familiar reminders – no mission statement and no donor plaques. The absence felt unsettling and eerie. Beside the mural was a locked door, labeled not with Providence or St. Paul’s Hospital but with the name of the regional health authority and Shoreline Space. Outside it, elderly patients unsuspectingly sat in wheelchairs, on walkers, or on chairs, waiting for their ride in a handicapped-accessible van. This was the wall and the door to the euthanasia clinic, conjoined to our Catholic hospital. The mural and the doorway together became more than décor – they became a map of contested moral space.

Canada – Laboratory of Euthanasia

Canada has transformed into a real-world testing ground for euthanasia – what the law calls medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Initially permitted only in cases of suffering with terminal illness, [i] MAiD has rapidly expanded through court challenges framed as rights. Law makers and healthcare systems have responded with unexpected enthusiasm by widening eligibility to include patients with chronic conditions, disabilities, mental illness, frailty, and various perceived sufferings.

By the end of 2024, around 90,000 Canadians had died by MAiD since it became legal in 2016.[ii] In 2023, MAiD deaths accounted for 4.7% of all Canadian deaths,[iii] making it the fifth leading cause of death nationwide. The pace of growth is nearly the same proportion the Netherlands reached after twenty years.[iv] Today, MAiD requests are rarely denied. [v]

Spatial Ethics

Spatial ethics, despite their significance to environmental and behavioral psychology,[vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] and moral theology, including principles such as cooperation with evil,[x] have received scant attention. Yet the arrangement of care spaces profoundly shapes our moral imagination and our moral discourse. Hospitals and hospices are not the only ones facing spatial ethics issues. Risks to patients or individuals residing in long-term care homes and other congregate housing settings may be elevated due to the shared use of common areas and, frequently, rooms among clients. They may not be able to express their concerns adequately due to their cognitive decline, serious chronic illness and comorbidities, lack of care advocates, language barriers, and loneliness and isolation. For patients with disabilities, frequently, the limited access to home care, disability support and services in their own communities result in unwanted hospitalization. And MAiD assessments are more readily available in hospitals. These care spaces may implicitly communicate to vulnerable populations that their lives are burdensome.

Built To Coerce

When my poster Built to Coerce: Ethics of Imposed Euthanasia (MAiD) Provision in a Catholic Hospital Space received recognition at the Catholic Medical Association conference, the moment was bittersweet. The award affirmed the urgency of examining how legal and healthcare structures can pressure Catholic and other mission-driven organizations, medical professionals, and patients toward euthanasia through spatial arrangements. Yet the recognition could not erase the grief that such coercion exists, nor the weight of knowing that euthanasia clinics are being embedded in contested care settings across the country, reshaping not only the geography of care but the very meaning of healthcare itself.

Meanings of Healthcare Space

Traditionally, healthcare spaces served as operational, missional, and moral actors. The euthanasia clinic I described is located immediately inside a main entrance of our Catholic hospital. Its placement – on the main floor, adjacent to high-volume outpatient specialty clinics and diagnostic labs and visible along corridor sightlines – functions as an operational and missional signal for the regional health authority and the government. It implicitly states who matters and who is deemed peripheral. Despite a pre-existing agreement signed two decades earlier, denominational healthcare organizations now face human-rights legal challenges and mounting pressure to provide euthanasia onsite in exchange for a license to operate and receive public funding. This forced presence demands collective moral reflection and renewed missional rigor – not only for Catholic healthcare organizations but for any organization striving to remain a witness to the dignity of life.

On the Ground

British Columbia – our province – has the second-highest per capita rate of MAiD deaths across the country.[xi] By 2023, MAiD deaths had already surpassed deaths from illicit drug overdoses.[xii]In 2024, MAiD accounted for 6.7% of all deaths in BC.[xiii] [xiv] Of the 3,000 MAiD deaths in 2024, nearly 90 % were seniors aged 65 and over. 35% died by MAiD for “Other Conditions” – not cancer or cardiovascular diseases –, with frailty being the leading cause under the “Other” category. MAiD has become a solution to old age. In 2024, approximately 40% of all MAiD deaths in BC occurred in private residences.[xv] Their last breaths in the air of family spaces risk shared memories being tainted. Spatial ethics issues surrounding MAiD now touch every care and housing setting.[xvi]

It is not difficult to imagine how frail seniors reach such decisions, surrounded by cues embedded in care spaces. In hospitals, they overhear conversations about MAiD in multi-occupancy rooms or find pamphlets left at their bedside. In hospices, if MAiD is openly celebrated next door, the space begins to speak to the minds of the dying. Standalone MAiD suites are also appearing in business complexes, without clear signage, mission statements, or donor plaques – eerily similar to Shoreline Space. One is built in direct view of a community dialysis clinic, remains unmarked with smoky windows, passed daily by unsuspecting patients and office workers.

A Warning to the World

Canada is a warning to the world as an experimental laboratory of euthanasia. When healing and killing share a wall, corridor, and a roof, they become each other’s gatekeepers, and the very meaning of healthcare space is at stake. An unsuspecting patient walking past a MAiD clinic is not only a Canadian story. It is a parable of what hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes elsewhere may soon confront. Built to Coerce was not only the title of a poster; it is the reality inscribed in our healthcare architecture. The question is not whether pressures will come – they already exist. The question is where we will find the courage to preserve spaces where life is reverenced before the geography of care is irresistibly altered.

Build to Care, Not to Coerce

If Catholic healthcare is to remain a witness to the dignity of life, then MAiD-free zones cannot be left to chance, convenience, or the whim of those who promote euthanasia. Catholic Medical Association members and all who serve in healthcare are called to remain a constant presence and an unwavering witness to the dignity of life, safeguarding spaces that are theoretically sound, theologically rooted, and morally grounded. Let us call our brothers and sisters, regardless of vocation, to build to care, not to coerce.

Dr. Yuriko Ryan is a bioethicist and gerontologist based in Vancouver, Canada. She serves on the Catholic Medical Association’s Ethics Committee and the International Ad-hoc Committee. Her writing explores the moral contours of artificial intelligence, aging, and end-of-life care, appearing in Momento, her weekly bioethics newsletter, and feature articles for AI and Faith. Through her lectures, publications, and committee work, she advocates for human dignity across all stages of life, guided by a Catholic lens.

For footnotes, please see Ryan's original article in The Pulse.