‘Dead at Noon’ by Gillian Bennett

Gillian Bennett created a website deadatnoon.com to be made public after her death in 2014. In a blog post of almost 2,000 words, Gillian describes her suffering from dementia and reviews her decision to take her own life at 85. Her post was written both to dispel taboos around discussing death, as well as to advocate for legalizing assisted suicide. Outlining current options for her care under Canadian law, the future costs she would impose on the healthcare system, and her fear of ‘becoming a vegetable’, she concludes that the financial and emotional impact of these options make them undesirable. Throughout the post Gillian Bennett emphasizes the social conditions that influence her choice, referring to Canada’s ageing population as a 'social and economic disaster in the making', and her decision to ‘cost Canada as little as possible in my declining years’. In addition to not being a burden on Canada, she also states that it matters to her not to become a burden on her family. At the same time, Gillian stops short of any deeper discussion of what choosing to die means in the context of fearing to become a burden. In our family, she writes, ‘it is recognized that any adult has the right to make her own decision,’ offering a thin version of freedom limited to free choice. Bennett died by ingesting drugs, and while her husband was a witness, he did not assist her. Her family has received thousands of emails, and as of March 2024 her blog post has been read half a million times. 

When Gillian Bennett died, Canadian law considered it a crime to assist any person wanting to commit suicide. In 2012, the Supreme Court of British Columbia (BC) – the province in which Bennett lived – ruled that the Criminal Code provisions prohibiting assisted suicide in Canada were unconstitutional. The federal government appealed, and the BC Court of Appeal upheld the ban on assisted suicide (2013). However, the BC Civil Liberties Association appealed the 2013 ruling, and the issue of assisted dying was once again going to be discussed in the Canadian Supreme Court. Gillian’s letter aimed to intervene in these debates, and her blog post became emblematic of the idea that medical assistance in dying was desirable for certain individuals. In February 2015, the ban on assisted dying was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada. Gillian’s post was consistently been cited in parliamentary debates on the legalization and expansion of assisted dying in Canada. For example, her experience was brought up several times in relation to advance directives (asking for MAID by advance directive is currently illegal in Canada) because she advocated an obligatory ‘Living Will’, to be completed by all mentally competent adults over age 50. Bennett took her own life earlier than she would have otherwise wanted to if she had been able to make an advance directive. While Gillian’s wish not to be a burden seems to be a clear, self-reflective position, it is worth reflecting on the potentially gendered implications of her desire – women are often more wary of being a burden than men – and the fact that it might point to the need for better care in Canada. (At one point she writes 'I do not like hospitals—they are dirty places.') Both of her children spoke to the pain caused by her death, despite their conviction that it had been their mother’s autonomous choice to die. Her daughter, Sarah, reflects that '[e]ven though my mom died painlessly in exactly the way she chose, at the time she chose, knowing that she left the legacy she chose, it’s still unbelievably painful.'