‘The Life and Death of Gloria Taylor’ by The Fifth Estate, CBC News

This 40-minute documentary follows Gloria Taylor’s decline from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in the final year of her life. In parallel, it follows the legal team at the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) as they argue the Carter case before the British Columbia Supreme Court (BCSC). As the film documents those two arcs, it explores Gloria’s desire for a medically assisted death and arguments for and against legalization. Gloria describes her pursuit of a medically assisted death as stemming from a desire to avoid death by starvation or dehydration after a withdrawal of care. In opposition to this desire, Dr. Will Johnston, then-President of Physicians for Life advances the perspective that there is a ‘world of difference’ between palliative care, including terminal sedation or withdrawal of care, and ‘actively killing the patient’ through assisted suicide or euthanasia. The documentary highlights Gloria’s relief and joy when the BCCLA wins their case before the BCSC and closes on her final decline with ALS before her death.

In the documentary, Gloria asks, ‘Where does the government get off thinking they have a right to tell me how to die?’ The filmmakers draw parallels between Gloria and Sue Rodriguez. Both Gloria and Sue suffered from ALS and became faces of the right to die movement in Canada. In 1991, Sue famously asked, ‘Who owns my life?’ as she undertook a constitutional challenge to the Criminal Code provisions that outlawed medical assistance in dying. Two decades later, Gloria was one of the plaintiffs in the Carter case, which successfully challenged those same Criminal Code provisions. The Carter case is so named after Lee Carter, the daughter of Kay Carter, who died by assisted suicide at Dignitas, a Swiss clinic that provides legal, assisted suicide to non-residents. After accompanying her mother to Switzerland, Lee and her husband, Hollis Johnson, filed a legal case arguing that Canada’s ban on medically assisted death violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They argued their case with co-plaintiffs Dr. William Shoichet, a family physician who was willing to practice medical assistance in dying if the prohibitions were struck down, and the BCCLA. Gloria was added as a plaintiff after hearing a news story about the case and contacting the BCCLA. As someone who was terminally ill, but who did not have the financial means to travel to Switzerland, Gloria became the public face of the Carter case. Through the case, Gloria was the first Canadian to be granted a right to die through a constitutional exemption from the BCSC. Ultimately, she did not use the exemption and died from an infection on 4 October 2012. Four years after Gloria’s death, the Carter case resulted in the legalization of medical assistance in dying in Canada.