When Kristin Logan learned she had stage-four ovarian cancer, doctors warned that her prospects for survival were poor.
What she did not anticipate was receiving information about how to end her life before she had even been referred to an oncologist to discuss possible treatment.
Soon after her diagnosis in September 2023, the Canadian received pamphlets in the mail about the country’s medical assistance in dying, or MAiD, programme.
Kristin, 46, had spent months trying to secure medical attention while doctors repeatedly dismissed her symptoms. Now, she says, the healthcare system appeared to be ‘setting’ her up to die.
‘My husband and I just looked at each other,’ Kristin told the Daily Mail. ‘It was basically like getting mail that repeated what my doctor had said: “This will end your life,” and then, “Here are your options for that”.’
By the time she received the diagnosis, Kristin was already gravely unwell. Fluid had built up in her lungs, she was experiencing intense pain and her weight was falling rapidly.
A dual Canadian-American citizen and US Air Force veteran, she decided that leaving Canada was her best chance of getting the care she needed to survive.
In what she describes as a period of ‘extreme medical duress’, Kristin was too weak to walk when she was taken aboard a ferry from British Columbia. Her husband and daughter watched from the pier.
Kristin Logan, 46, says she moved to the US for cancer treatment after Canadian health officials sent her pamphlets about the country’s medical assistance in dying programme
Kristin was diagnosed with stage-four ovarian cancer in 2023 and told her chances of survival were slim
‘I didn’t know if I was going to see my husband and daughter again. They didn’t know if they were ever going to see me alive again,’ she recalled.
The events that followed, Kristin says, exposed what she believes are deep failings in Canada’s healthcare system — and showed how MAiD can erode hope for patients still fighting to live.
‘It took me years, to be honest, to register how cruel and inhumane that was, and how dystopian it is,’ she said. ‘They had no business sending that kind of information to people… It’s extremely disturbing.’
After leaving the ferry, Kristin arrived in Vancouver, where her parents collected her and drove her across the US border to Seattle.
She was then enrolled in the Veterans Affairs healthcare system, which provides medical benefits to US military veterans, and began receiving cancer treatment.
Kristin says the difference in approach was immediately apparent. Despite the seriousness of her illness, American healthcare workers were determined to pursue every possible avenue to extend her life.
‘They’re all plugged into that mentality of, “We’re going to keep you alive. We’re going to keep it going”,’ she said.
‘That’s very different from being looked in the face and told, “You’re going to die”. It’s also very different from immediately getting information about your end-of-life options.’
Canada operates one of the world’s broadest euthanasia programmes. Its government-funded MAiD system became legal in 2016.
The programme permits terminally ill people to request death administered by a doctor or nurse, typically through an injection. In 2021, the law was expanded to cover people who were not terminally ill but had an incurable illness, condition or disability.
Its expansion has, however, sparked fierce backlash among conservative politicians, medical professionals and disability advocacy groups, who fear assisted dying is becoming a substitute for proper healthcare.
Doctors and provincial authorities in recent years have reported euthanasia deaths among those seeking the procedure because they were poor, homeless or unable to seek the government support they needed to live.
Kristin says, in her case, she felt she was being subtly pressured to undergo MAiD.
‘I felt pushed to accept what seemed the inevitability of my demise and contribute to society and my family by speeding that along. As if it was selfish of me to want to live,’ she says.
‘When the institution is giving you information about dying when they’re not giving you information about how they’re going to treat you, when they’re going to treat you, or how it’s going to work out, that leaves you feeling like they don’t want you to get treatment.’
She adds that MAiD is particularly being ‘shoved’ on the disabled or ill to remove a perceived burden from a strained healthcare system.
‘They don’t need, and should not be getting, a constant reminder from the government that they ought to kill themselves.’
‘It just sucks the hope out of the room completely… I think that is the worst thing you can make a cancer patient feel,’ she adds.
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Kristin says she has no intention of moving back to Canada
Early last year, Kristin and her family moved permanently to the US.
She says she no longer felt ‘safe’ in Canada after her healthcare experience, so chose to build a new life across the border.
Now Kristin, who was once told she only had months to live, is in remission.
To mark how far she has come, Kristin and her husband, Donovan James, climbed one of the highest mountain peaks in Texas’ Big Bend National Park.
At the summit, with the vast Texas landscape surrounding them, Donovan filmed a video condemning Canada’s healthcare system.
‘Here we are, we’re sitting on top of the world,’ he says in the clip on social media.
‘[Kristin] still has the strength and stamina to hike two hours up to the top of this mountain peak… something that would never have happened had we stayed in Canada. She’d be dead.’
‘This is evil… and Canadians have made this their culture that it’s normal and OK to just go kill yourself because a doctor says there is no hope,’ he continued.
‘Where is the death? Do you see death? I don’t see death, I see somebody fighting.’
Kristin is currently taking part in a maintenance drug trial, which she says is ‘very promising’.
But while Kristin chose to keep fighting for her life, she says her experience has left her deeply critical of the system she believes failed her when it was needed most.
Kristin with her husband Donovan James last month. She says she is now in remission
‘If the government is responsible for healthcare and they are not providing it in a medically reasonable fashion — in terms of time and quality — and then they turn around and offer medical assistance in dying, and you can get that much faster than you can get care and treatment, that’s a problem… It feels very sinister,’ she says.
‘I think the government should be taking a hard look at why they are faster to kill their citizens than to help them and treat them. Fix the healthcare system before you keep expanding a nicer death.’
MAiD came under fire last month after a Canadian woman claimed her Christian grandmother was euthanised against her will.
After taking a cognitive test, designed to ascertain whether she was sound of mind enough to consent to MAiD, Brigitte Stegemann, 83, ‘got every question wrong’, her granddaughter Brigitte Kranendonk told the Daily Mail.
Just 48 hours after she wept uncontrollably at the notion of MAiD, Stegemann is said to have died with her hands clasped in prayer. She was covered in her own blood due to a botched first attempt at connecting the IV, administered by a nurse allegedly not wearing gloves.
Kranendonk is appealing to the Chief Coroner’s Office in Ontario, as well as the Patient Ombudsman and Belleville Police, in a bid to ascertain whether what happened the morning of July 10 at The Pearl care home in Cannifton was legal.
Bereaved and distraught, she claims MAiD practitioners took advantage of her grandmother’s vulnerability to perform the procedure, which she alleges was carried out without express consent.
‘She was a vulnerable human being, and they saw an opportunity,’ Kranendonk said.
She suspects the MAiD practitioners were ideologically motivated, and believes the chain of events leading up to the procedure should be investigated.
Medically assisted suicide in Canada is responsible for nearly one in ten deaths in some parts of the country, according to the New York Post.
Kristin suggests the number could be much lower if healthcare were more adequate.
‘I think the government should be taking a hard look at why they are faster to kill their citizens than to help them and treat them,’ she said.
‘How many of those deaths could have been avoided if people had received timely care, timely medical imaging, timely testing, and had a family doctor? Had they received the care they needed, how many people would have been in that position?’
‘I’m sure they would have rather chosen to have timely treatment and care. You left them without that, and now they were suffering, and that was the only way to end the suffering. That’s not humane, and that’s not dignified.’