Donate to Alex's half-marathon fundraising run for CCC and EPC

Alex Schadenberg and Marcel Lemmen are running a half-marathon on Sunday September 28, 2025 to raise money for the Compassionate Community Care charity (CCC) and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC).

Donations from the half-marathon (21.1 km) run are very much appreciated. 

The Compassionate Community Care charity operates a help-line, a training program for visiting seniors, an advocacy training program and a calling service for lonely seniors.

Charitable donations can be made to Compassionate Community Care at: (Donation Link).

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition informs, educates, and supports opposition to killing by euthanasia and assisted suicide and endorses proper care for people in need.

Donate to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which is not a charity, at: (Donation Link).

 

This is the sixth consecutive year that Alex and Marcel are doing a half-marathon fund-raising run for CCC and EPC.

The Health Impacts of Seniors' Loneliness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In the past, The Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) was a strong promoter of Canada's euthanasia law and expansions of that law, but a new CARP initiative tackling Seniors Loneliness is worthwhile. In a recent update on Seniors' Loneliness CARP states:

Social isolation is a serious issue when it comes to seniors and a signal of a dysfunctional society. It’s estimated that almost 30% of Canadian seniors live alone – and without strong community connections, many of these seniors suffer silently from loneliness and depression.

Loneliness can impact physical and mental well-being. Isolation can lead to depression, which in turn can further exacerbate health issues. For example, depression in older adults is tied to a higher risk of cardiac diseases. At the same time, depression reduces an older person’s ability to recover from illness.

Depression is not a typical part of aging. Yet it is estimated that 20% of older adults experience symptoms – like persistent sadness, loss of interest in activities, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness and even suicidal thoughts – and rates increase up to 40% for those in hospitals and long-term care homes.

These numbers are a warning sign of a public health crisis hiding in plain sight. The World Health Organization recently named loneliness a global health priority, urging countries to take action. And the science is clear: chronic isolation is more harmful than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

While CARP is promoting their initiative to counter Senior's Loneliness, I want to reiterate my support for the Compassionate Community Care charity that also focuses on reducing Seniors' Loneliness.

While CARP has strongly promoted euthanasia (MAiD) in the past, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition recognizes how loneliness can lead to requests euthanasia. Many people who are living with difficult health conditions also feel lonely, feel hopeless and begin to believe that they have no further reason to live. 

Instead of offering these people death, they should be offered support from a caring community who reasures them that they are important and that they still have a reason to live.

Contact the Compassionate Community Care charity (CCC) to join the Visitor Training program or become trained to provide advocacy for your family members or people who you know. CCC also provides a calling service for contacting lonely seniors who simply need someone to talk to or someone to listen.

Healing Retreats: For those grieving a loss to euthanasia (MAiD).

You're Invited to Healing Retreats for Those Grieving a Loss to Euthanasia

"People were healing, and we could feel it. So thankful..." — Retreat participant

Have you lost someone you love to euthanasia (MAiD)?

We invite you to a gentle, supportive space for healing and reflection. Our upcoming retreats offer a time to gather with others who share this unique and often deeply personal grief. Together, we will engage in guided sharing, a pastoral talk, a memorial service, and a shared meal.

Wednesday, November 19 | Evening
St. John the Compassionate Mission
155 Broadview Ave, Toronto, ON

Registration is done through St. Mary’s Refuge. A brief form will ask for some background information to help us ensure this retreat is right for you and to better support your healing. Please feel free to share only what you are comfortable disclosing. All responses are confidential.

We are here to walk with you, at your own pace, toward healing and hope.

Register: http://www.compassionatecommunitycare.org/euthanasia-healing-retreats

Warmly,

Compassionate Community Care

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A Family’s Heartbreak: MAiD Decision Leaves Loved Ones Grieving and Confused

This article was published by Compassionate Community Care on June 11, 2025.

By Kathy Matusiak Costa
Executive Director, Compassionate Community Care

A grieving family from Eastern Canada is speaking out following the unexpected decision of their elderly aunt to proceed with a scheduled Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) procedure at a hospital in British Columbia, just days after a fall that led to her admission into rehabilitation care.

According to her niece, the woman had not suffered a serious injury—“she didn’t even break a bone”—and had only recently been told by doctors that she had arthritis. But the family was stunned to learn that she had already scheduled her euthanasia and was resolute in her decision to go through with it.

“We were willing to bring her home, to take care of her, to give her a dignified natural death surrounded by family and love,” said the niece. “But she cried and hung up on us. She said she didn’t want to. And now it’s happening today.”

The family was particularly disturbed to learn from local contacts that the procedure was scheduled to take place in what was described as a “shack-like enclosure” beside the hospital. A national advocacy organization, Compassionate Community Care (CCC), attempted to intervene and speak with the woman directly to offer support and alternatives, but she declined all outreach.

Her niece and sister are left devastated—not just by the finality of the decision, but by how quickly it was arranged and how little opportunity they had to understand or influence it.

“Had we not found out she chose MAiD, we would have assumed she passed peacefully, naturally,” her niece said. “Instead, we’re left with this overwhelming feeling that our loved one is being killed.”

This case raises ongoing questions about the safeguards, timelines, and communication protocols surrounding MAiD in Canada. Critics have warned that vulnerable individuals, especially those facing isolation or recent trauma, may opt for MAiD without fully exploring palliative care or family-based alternatives. For families like this one, the aftermath is not only grief—but also a painful sense of helplessness.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition works to Protect Your Life.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) offers several ways to protect you from euthanasia and assisted suicide.

EPC asks you to share your personal stories related to euthanasia or assisted suicide. Many people have family or friends who died by euthanasia or assisted suicide under questionable circumstances. By sharing your story, you open the door to other people sharing their story.

1. The Life-Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care will protect you when you cannot make medical or personal care decisions for yourself.

This legal document enables you to appoint someone you trust to be your Power of Attorney for Personal Care (language differs based on jurisdiction). This document makes clear statements about euthanasia, assisted suicide and medical treatment options and guides medical practitioners and the person you have appointed to make medical and personal care decisions that protect your life, when you are unable to make decisions for yourself.

The Life Protecting Power of Attorney uses a basic format that is legal within most jurisdictions and also has available specific formats for jurisdictions with special requirements.

Canadians purchase the Life-Protecting Power of Attorney from EPC for $10 + taxes. 

Americans purchase US State versions from EPC-USA for $15  (Purchase link) or contact EPC at: 1-877-439-3348 or info@epcc.ca.

2. EPC suggests that you write a straight forward letter to your physician explaining that you oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide and have that letter added to your medical file.

3. The Do Not Kill Me wallet card is available from EPC upon request or with a donation. The card provides further protection when sign and date, with a witness, on the back of the card.

EPC will send you Do Not Kill Me wallet cards by contacting us by email: info@epcc.ca. or at: 1-877-439-3348. 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition yearly friendship fee is $30 (individual) or $50 (group). Pay for your friendship online.

 

Donations can be made to EPC by (Online Donation Link) or (Paypal Donation Link) or send E-transfer donations to:  info@epcc.ca or call the EPC office at: 1-877-439-3348.

EPC works with the Compassionate Community Care charity (CCC) that offers practical advice and information for people when they or a loved one has questions related to medical treatment options or are concerned that a loved one is considering or being pressured to be killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide.

CCC developed a community based Visitor Training Program to provide training for you to visit people who are lonely and isolated. CCC also developed an Advocacy Training Program to help you to provide medical or personal care advocacy for people you know. CCC has also established a calling service to contact people who are lonely, isolated and vulnerable. Contact CCC at: 1-855-675-8749.

Dying to Meet You: Renewing Life

By Amanda Achtman

My friend Rabbi Jonathan Jaffit didn't expect euthanasia to impact him personally.

As an Orthodox Jew, he always told me, "That's not something we do."

But one day, he got a phone call that brought the issue to him in an unexpected way.

In the newest Dying to Meet You vignette, "Renewing Life", Rabbi Jaffit shares the story and offers some poignant insights on our cultural moment.

The Renewing Life vignette is an excellent lead-in to the importance of the Compassionate Community Care program. 

To receive training in visiting, advocacy or calling people who need a friend, Contact Compassionate Community Care at info@beingwith.org

Community of Hope Outreach: Connecting with Seniors Project

Compassionate Community Care is starting a new calling service.

Regular check-ins by phone or Zoom with seniors who may not be able to receive an in-person visitor.

The calling service is for persons aged 55+ who may be socially or physically isolated and are looking for support, or a friendly person to talk to. We are looking for volunteers to make calls and seniors to receive them! Contact us if you are interested.

Calls are available in English and French. Volunteers who are proficient in French are needed.

For more information about the Compassionate Community Care calling service (Information Link).

This project is funded by the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP), which provides funding for projects that make a difference in the lives of seniors in their communities.

Have you lost someone you love to euthanasia? November 20th healing retreat.

Have you lost someone you love to euthanasia?

Join us for a healing retreat, Project Anna and Simeon, which includes supper followed by a talk on grieving and providing an opportunity for sharing and memorial service. 

The first of its kind in Canada, this event will be on Wednesday November 20th, 2024, and will begin at 4:30 p.m.

This is a collaboration with St. John the Compassionate Mission, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, St. Mary’s Refuge, and Compassionate Community Care. It will be at St. John the Compassionate Mission (155 Broadview Ave in Toronto). Please register in advance to assist@stmarysrefuge.org or call Compassionate Community Care at: 519-439-6445.

Please share this event and its details widely with your contacts and friends.

When MAiD starts, its relentless, it goes after every part of society and affects everyone

This article was published by the Compassionate Community Care blog.

Calls have been steady on the CCC helpline. Some, callers are looking to help loved ones turn away from assisted suicide, others need assistance regarding advocacy or ensuring their loved one’s needs are being met and they have not been treated wrongly. 

This article captures one caller’s response, her reality and experience with MAiD being drawn on around her, for her one family member and to those vulnerable in her community.

Quotes from Laura*, one women’s experience (Ontario, Canada):

I was shocked when I first heard about MAiD, I was volunteering at a hospital and we were ordered not to talk about it; this was just before Covid. Then more and more people were talking to the patients about it, yet volunteers could not object and say anything to dissuade patients or their family members from choosing it: it was completely one-sided. I decided I was not going to go back to volunteering; I’m not going to comply with that.

When you find your own family members are talking about it, it hits a whole new level. “Yikes” – is my first line of thought, it’s creeping all over the place. My brother has terminal cancer, and he flew out the euthanasia term once while speaking to us: “when the time comes, I would go for MAID”, I was in shock. I didn’t know what to say. My query is when should we talk about? His comment caught me by surprise, I was not prepared and I did not know how to respond. Now I’m better equipped to deal with it.

It’s insidious, a friend of mine was all for having MAID done for her husband, ‘there’s nothing wrong with it.’ And yet, she goes to church all the time. It’s creeping into every element of society.

When I first called the CCC helpline, and was told about what actually happens when you get euthanized, the injections you get -- it’s not necessarily pain-free, no suffering, and the easy exit people assume it is. There are accounts and publications that share the experience of it each injection does something else: the first immobilizes you, then the second injection feels like an “internal inferno,” followed by a “drowning sensation,” and then finally, the heart stops beating, a cardiac arrest. All of it can last anywhere from 5-30 minutes. I’ve never heard of what the process may feel like, I liked knowing this so I can share it with others.

What so many who are desperate at end-of-life don’t realize, is that there is always a cure for the pain. Not long ago, a person was in hospital and getting treatment, after the staff approached her about her considering getting euthanized and she refused, they made it so she had another week in the hospital and after that she would be charged $800/day. She went through with and got MAiD, instead of being charged.

Recently at a local organizational meeting, one of the meeting members threw out the idea of MAID for her own husband (he was sick since 2009), I was shocked and saddened she would wish this for her own husband. I believe it was her sharing she needs helps, respite care and support as she’s probably burned out. She doesn’t have anybody and this is not a way for her to spend the last years of her life.

The bottom line is, MAiD/euthanasia - it’s not about caring for someone, it’s about money. The hospitals see this as a cost saving, and provide it readily to anyone for any reason.”