‘In memory of Dr. Donald Low’ by Canadian Partnership Against Cancer

Donald Low was a Canadian physician and microbiologist widely known in Canada for his work in the 2003 SARS epidemic in Ontario. In his YouTube video, he describes being diagnosed with a brain tumor and coming to terms with the terminal nature of his diagnosis. He outlines how he believes that it is unfortunate that Canada does not permit individuals in situations like his own to seek medical assistance in dying and explains what the procedure looks like in countries that allow the assistance.

Donald Low’s video was released in 2013, before Section 241.2 was added to the Criminal Code in 2016, permitting medical assisted death in certain cases. At the time of his video, conversation on the topic of medical aid in dying was frequent in Canada, and his story was widely circulated and referenced in multiple legal contexts, including by a parliamentarian on the physician-assisted dying parliamentary committee who stated that when his wife, a physician, heard about his committee work, she immediately forwarded him the video. The video would later go on to be referenced by the Ontario Health Minister in a Senate committee, and by Senator Donna Dasko in the third reading of the bill to amend the Canadian Criminal Code to permit medical aid in dying.

* Addendum on 8 September 2026:

With a 7-minute running time, the video ‘In memory of Dr. Donald Low’ was uploaded to YouTube on 4 September 2013 by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC). Created by the federal government as a policy experiment in 2006, CPAC is a nonprofit that, although funded by Health Canada, has worked independently ‘to move Canada’s cancer strategy into action’. Dr. Low’s testimony, containing his plea for assisted dying, was part of ‘The Truth of It’ – a series of videos featuring Canadians who shared their stories about what it is like to have cancer. Low begins by introducing himself as an ‘infectious disease internal medicine physician at Mount Sinai Hospital… diagnosed as having a brain stem tumour’. While the camera remains mostly still, the framing alternates between a medium shot and close-ups of Low – sometimes also cutting to family photos, as if we were privy to an intimate slideshow. Wearing jeans and a blue-striped polo, Low is sitting on a slate-blue couch with a burgundy throw and brown tartan pillows; artwork is visible in the background. Even if his crossed legs and fingers seem relaxed, we are immediately struck by his having one eye closed and the other held open by a piece of medical tape. The video is edited into segments: ‘How will I die?’; ‘Physician-assisted death’; and ‘Hope’. Low’s speaking style is matter-of-fact, conveying the same frank authoritativeness he became known for as a public servant: ‘the prognosis of this type of tumour is bad… And what worries me is how I’m going to die. I’m not afraid of dying… I just don’t want [it] to be a long protracted-out process where I’m unable to carry out my normal bodily functions.’ After mentioning countries where the use of narcotics is accepted to ‘give you a very simple way out’, he declares himself ‘frustrated, not being able to have control of my own life, not being able to make the decision for myself when enough is enough’. He ventures it would ‘be a long time before we mature to a level where we accept dying with dignity’. According to a 2015 piece in Hospital News, ‘for the first time in his life, Dr. Donald Low was wrong’; Low would die 8 days after recording that video, but medical aid in dying would be legalized soon after – by Québec in 2014–2015 and by the federal government in 2015–2016 (see related entries about Manon Brunelle and Sue Rodriguez). Gathering 30,000 views in 1 day, Low’s video played a definite part in the legalization effort – as did his widow, Maureen Taylor, who co-chaired an Expert Advisory Group on Physician-Assisted Dying and was featured in the 2016 CBC documentary Road to Mercy.