CBC News
By Sarah Ritchie
The Canadian Press
May 31st, 2025
Price Carter, son of the woman who inspired Canada’s assisted dying law, is choosing to die on his own terms. His mother Kay died in Switzerland in 2010, before medically assisted death was legal in Canada…
Price Carter is planning to die this summer. The 68-year-old has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He knows it will take his life eventually; before it does, he intends to die on his own terms with his family at his side. He has that option, in large part, because of his mother.
Kay Carter’s name is on the landmark Supreme Court of Canada case that gave Canadians the right to choose a medically assisted death just over a decade ago.
It was more than 15 years ago that Price, along with his sisters Marie and Lee and his brother-in-law Hollis, surreptitiously made their way to Switzerland to be with their mother on her final day. The 89-year-old was living with spinal stenosis and chose to go to a non-profit facility abroad that provided medically assisted death. She became the 10th Canadian to do so. At the time, assisted death was illegal in Canada.
Price Carter said he wants to talk about his condition because he wants Canadians to talk about death, as uncomfortable as it is.
Medical assistance in dying is becoming more common in Canada. In 2023, the latest year for which national statistics are available, 19,660 people applied for the procedure and just over 15,300 people were approved. More than 95 per cent of those were people whose deaths were considered reasonably foreseeable.
Sarah Ritchie, Reporter, The Canadian Press
