Palliative care is a valuable role, making death easier to face…but for some it isn’t enough. “What I’m worried about is how I’m going to die,” said Dr. Donald Low, infectious disease specialist (the 2003 SARS expert) who advocated for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the days before his death last week (on September […]

Killing oneself is not illegal in Canada, but helping someone to commit suicide is against the law. So Susan Griffiths, a seventy-two-year-old Canadian, went to a clinic in Zurich, Switzerland for the right to die on her own terms, with the help of a doctor, before her body could be completely taken over by multiple […]

“Have somebody rip your heart out and hold it in front of your face and just have them squeeze the life out of it. That’s the only way I can express that kind of a pain. Like…it’s torturous,” thirty-eight-year-old Tammy Marquardt said today when asked about how it felt to be wrongly convicted of murdering […]

Some people get so angry at the injustice of a death that they wish to destroy the perpetrator if only they could get their hands on them! Believe it or not, that is a normal reaction; it’s what you do with your anger that matters. But anger, a form of energy, can be transformed into […]

Everyone would agree that advances in medical science have helped extend the quantity and the quality of life. But by extending the lives of terminally ill patients, those advances have created a raging debate about euthanasia. Many argue that just because we CAN keep certain people alive does not necessarily mean that we SHOULD keep […]

Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan wheat farmer, was recently granted a full parole beginning today: Monday, December 6, 2010. He was the Canadian convicted of second-degree murder for what he says was the “mercy killing” (to end pain and suffering) of his severely disabled twelve-year-old, forty-pound daughter, Tracey, in 1993. He was convicted in 2001. (Latimer […]

Crime can turn your world upside down in so many ways…especially if you are a survivor of homicide. There is the seemingly endless grief to deal with, mixed with feelings of guilt for not having protected the victim—a consuming sense of helplessness! The world seems to be a hostile and uncaring place as you realize, […]

Imagine delivering your victim impact statement to confessed murderer Colonel Russell Williams and challenging him to lift his bowed head and look at you while you speak…and have him comply. And as you deliver your statement directly to him, what would you feel?: Shock? Outrage? Hate…knowing no punishment could make your shattered life better? Despair? […]

Where I live in Canada it’s not too far to cross the border into the USA, so my family and I pop over the border often (in fact, we went just a few days ago on the Labor day weekend)…for camping, eating out, sightseeing, traveling and sometimes shopping. When I heard about a Denny’s waitress […]

Melissa sits in her one-room cabin and mourns the loss of her only son, Jack, who was killed three and a half years ago.She grieves for him every day.And she’s having trouble accepting the fact that Torrance, the man who killed her son, gets out of jail today…he just finished serving a two-year sentence for […]