(Thomas Froese)
A suicide prevention message on a bus shelter in Berlin.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 23, 2026)
Wander just about anywhere in our time and find something about mental wellbeing.
In Berlin I once passed a bus shelter ad saying “Schweigen kostet Leben,” or “Silence costs lives.” An aging gentleman has his mouth taped shut. Someone’s father, likely? Grandfather? It’s an image to slow you down. Give words to your sorrow is its message in any language. Don’t bottle things up. And don’t be silenced. It might kill you. Or others.
“Give Sorrow Words” is also a worthwhile book by Lynn Keane, a mother who once shared at a Hamilton breakfast gathering – we were about 400 – about her son Daniel, just 23 when he died by suicide.
That St. Joe’s Healthcare Foundation event also gave microphones to others to share about their own loved ones lost to suicide. Broken hearts everywhere amidst the bacon and eggs and toast and clattering of dishes. I’ll never forget it, the sorrow expressed.
But the politics of suicide, the zeitgeist that sucks and blows at the same time, brings special grief. On one hand, let’s live well. Get help. Give help. Let’s especially support our youth. On the other hand, in Canada we’re exiting this world with increasing and frightening indifference. Forget about living well, my friend, in truth you don’t have to live at all. The voices are there.
The Suicide Prevention Community Council of Hamilton – it’s having a fundraising meal next week – is one local organization to thank for its ongoing work in this baffling space.
About 4,450 Canadians now die by suicide annually. Despite surging during COVID, this is its lowest level in 20 years. But suicide’s first cousin, MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying), has risen sharply since its 2016 start. About 16,000, or five per cent of all annual deaths in Canada, are now from MAID.
And Ottawa still has the nagging question of expanding this state-sanctioned death to people suffering solely with mental illness. Before summer break a joint parliamentary committee will recommend to government to keep the expansion on track for 2027, or not.
First scheduled for 2023, then 2024, now 2027, expansion has been delayed repeatedly because there’s no consensus on abandoning the most vulnerable people in our society. It’s simply impossible to separate someone’s treatable mental illness with their desire for death.
We’re not ready, nor should we be. This is the message from various communities, including concerned physicians and people with disabilities. As citizens and policy makers the need is to work together to improve the lives of the vulnerable, not end them.
One warning recently came from Dr. Jim van Os, a psychiatric expert from, interestingly, the Netherlands, hardly a bastion of conservativism. He told the committee’s MPs “Don’t do it.” Suicide contagion is one possible price of expanding MAID.
The overwhelming majority of the world has this understanding. Of 195 countries, only 11 have fully-regulated MAID. Three – the Benelux nations of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – have it for solely mental illness. Three.
No wonder. Physicians have been guided for centuries by the essence of the Hippocratic Oath, to work for life, not death. Not that you need be a doctor to know in your bones how right it is to help the vulnerable. This shows the better angels of our nature. For this we can always be ready.
There is the dying with dignity argument, especially for exceptional suffering. But globally about 160,000 people die daily, most from natural aging, and all with the inherent human dignity we’re born with. MAID, as if some home service coming in to fluff your pillows before doing you in, is a global anomaly. There’s far more dignity in protecting the voiceless.
You or I can choose to believe otherwise, but we may later find that when we’re in need, nobody is left to speak for us.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with a mental health crisis, call Canada’s Suicide Helpline 988. Charitable donations to the Suicide Prevention Community Council of Hamilton can be made at www.spcch.org Thomas Froese is at thomasfroese.com and thomasfroese.substack.com