death Archives – Page 2 of 6

Many Ontario doctors caught in euthanasia dilemma

He’s a friend. A doctor. His name is Stuart. I stood at the front door of his home, my son beside me.

Stuart is the keeper of the children’s bicycles while we’re abroad. We swung by to make arrangements to get them. That’s all it was, an ordinary May evening. But the world was somehow different. Its axis had shifted. At least for Stuart.

He’d just returned from Queen’s Park, he informed me, with other doctors lobbying for a

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The unknown boy and finding hope in dark places

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / May 6, 2016 / 2016, death, East-West relations, Europe's refugee crisis, Greece, homelessness, refugees, suffering, terrorism, travel / 4 minutes of reading

ATHENS ✦ I’ll never forget the unknown boy and his horrible end, not any more than I’ll forget Arash and his eyes on the day we met when the waters of the Mediterranean were cold.

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So grab death and scream “Mine!” And what does it turn into?

Leave a Comment / Daily Dad / March 20, 2016 / 2016, Canada's law on doctor-assisted suicide, death, decision making, doctor-assisted suicide, fear, suffering / 5 minutes of reading

It’s bedtime. Liz needs to get to the kitchen to make her snack for the next day. “Dad!” she says. “I’m afraid to go out there. Something’s there. I can feel it in my bones!” “That’s arthritis.” + But, really, it’s the kids who often come up with the most though-provoking comments. Sometimes they’re funny.

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Grab death and scream “mine!” And what does it turn into?

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / March 19, 2016 / 2016, assisted suicide in Canada, assisted suicide worldwide, Canada's Bill C-41, death, doctor-assisted death, suffering / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 19, 2016)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was getting late and she, my 12-year-old, sat on the couch and looked into the nothingness and pulled from the air a comment as plain and profound as any.

“You know,” she said, “People don’t know how good they have it.”

This is what happens when you live in Africa. You see things. Life. People. Suffering. Death sometimes. You get perspective.

“They don’t know,” Liz said. “People don’t know.” Canadians don’t know. This is what she said.

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Don’t read. Don’t feel. Don’t think. (And DON’T tell the kids.)

Leave a Comment / Daily Dad / February 3, 2016 / 2016, books, death, doctor-assisted suicide, The Giver, the school run / 4 minutes of reading

You never know what might happen when you pick up a book, even a book that has sat on your bookshelf for years like an old bottle of wine aged good and long for just the right moment. Such a book might even wake somebody up. That is the beauty of books, of course, their

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How a world with assisted suicide would look

3 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / February 1, 2016 / 2016, death, doctor-assisted suicide, human rights, suffering, The Giver / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Monday, February 1, 2016)

It’s 2049 and I’m an old man. I’ve made my decision. (At least I thought I made it.) It’s for release.

I’ve been given a choice in a pleasant manner for an injection or capsules. Soon this will all be over, another release into elsewhere, into eternity.

They’re out there, opinion polls on this procedure, on “release,” what in your day was called “doctor-assisted suicide.” Apparently most people are in favour. You have to wonder, though, about the questions.

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The hands of the old and the young

2 Comments / Daily Dad / January 16, 2016 / 2016, death, Froese family history, Opa Froese / 5 minutes of reading

The last note in this space was that life is a gift and life is a mystery, both clichés and both true. The other truth, as true as the sun rising every morning, is that we’re not made to live forever. The children’s Papa, their grandfather on their mother’s side, said this to me right around

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Fear and childbirth in Uganda

2 Comments / Daily Dad / November 12, 2015 / 2015, anxiety, death, fear, maternal mortality, our Ugandan home, pets, the children's babysitter / 5 minutes of reading

It’s morning and the sun is up, shining on the mud, and Zak, the dog, has left his bright orange ball to chase Tiblets. Tibs, as Liz is fond of calling him, is the poor cat who just took off into the bush. There is another way, though, and one of our cats, Mister Bubbles,

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