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Canadian News Bulletins

July 1 to July 31, 1997

July 28, 1997: Ottawa, Ont: Famous Canadian author ended own life, bio says

: A biography due this fall on one of Canada's most revered authors, Margaret Laurence , says she chose suicide rather than face the prospect of a lingering death from cancer.

On January 5, 1987, Laurence drank a fatal potion of some pills she had crushed and water and ended her life at the age of 60.

The official story told by Laurence's family and friends until now was that she had died alone of cancer at her old, two-storey brick home in the village of Lakefield near Peterborough, Ont.

But her previously unpublished diary and suicide note tell a different story. The Ottawa Citizen says that excerpts from these and other documents will be included in the book, The Life of Margaret Laurence (Knopf Canada, August 15)

The book was written by James King , an author and literary scholar at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., with the co-operation of the Laurence family.

Laurence chose suicide rather than face the prospect of a long painful death from lung and kidney cancer or run the risk of being a burden on friends and family, says King.

"Please, my near and dear ones, forgive me and understand. I hope this potion works. My spirit is already in another country and my body has been a damn nuisance. I have been so fortunate." said Laurence in a suicide note found near her body, which also gave funeral instructions.

King says that Laurence wrote in her diary several months before she died reasons why she should kill herself - the fear of pain, of being a burden, of being controlled by doctors. And there was another reason to do it: "I don't fear the Holy Spirit's wrath."

Laurence is best known as the author of "The Stone Angel", "A Jest of God" and "The Diviners" for which she won a Governor-General's Award.
"A Jest of God" was made into a film "Rachel, Rachel" starring Joanne Woodward, directed by Paul Newman (1968).

The Halifax doctor charged with murder in the death of a terminally ill cancer patient is going back to work.

Dr. Nancy Morrison, a respirologist at Atlantic Canada's largest health-care complex, says she's looking forward to being back in the hospital today.

"I'm just going to try to do my work and avoid conflict, basically," she said. "It's one of those things you just have to see how it goes."

Morrison, 41, will start seeing patients in the ambulatory-care clinic of the new Halifax Infirmary, part of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre.

She has been on a paid leave of absence since May, when she was charged with first-degree murder in the November 1996 death of a 65-year-old man from Moncton, N.B.

Her preliminary hearing is to begin Feb. 9. Morrison said patients have been calling her office to find out when she's coming back.

A five-member task force is examining the way the QEII handled the Morrison case before the murder charge was laid. Police and some doctors made allegations of a coverup at the complex after Morrison was suspended from the intensive-care unit for three months, then resigned.

The task force's report is expected by mid-August, although it is not known when it will be made public. Schurman said the findings will have no bearing on Morrison's ability to practise at the hospital.

Morrison is accused of killing Paul Mills, who died in the QEII's intensive-care unit. His family was notified Friday that she would be returning to work. They were not available for comment.

A severely depressed woamn who drowned her six-year-old autistic son in a bathtub will not be imprisoned, a Quebec Court judge decided (July 2).

Instead, Danielle Blais, 44, received a 23-month suspended sentence for manslaughter; this means that she won't go to jail for the death of her son Charles-Antoine.

The decision was hailed by many as a sensible compromise between the need to condemn the killing of a child and the recognition that Ms. Blais was in a desperate situation and poses no threat to society.

But some groups representing Canadians with disabilities said Ms. Blais should have been put behind bars to demonstrate that the lives of disabled people are as precious as anyone else's.

"The death of a child in those circumstances should have involved a jail sentence," said Mel Graham, spokesman for the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.

Last November, while suffering from a deep depression, Ms. Blais planned to killed herself. But she couldn't stand the thought of leaving her son alone or leaving someone else with the difficult task of raising him. She drowned him, slashed her wrists and called the police.

Ms. Blais left a suicide note expressing her frustration at trying to get school authorities to understand her son's autism, a condition that causes children to be extremely withdrawn and often leads to severe behavioural problems. She had lost her job and her babysitter; she had a history of depression in herself and her family. She pleaded guilty to mansaluaghter in March after a psychiatric assessment.

Judge Jean B. Falardeau rejected the Crown's call for a three-year prison term, explaining that such a sentence would not deter others in her situation.

"I have great difficulty in considing that imprisonment could dissuade a person who is sick," Judge Falardeau said.

"A society cannot tolerate such an action by one of its members, regardless of his or her illness," he said. "Imprisonment appears to me to be the only way to reflect this denunciation."

Instead of jail, however, Ms. Blais will spend the first year of her suspended sentence at a half-way house in Montreal. She is to be under the care of a psychiatrist and a psychologist; she is also to try to find a job.

The Austism Society of Greater Montreal has offered her part-time fund-raising work because "she wants to help other parents, because she know what we are going through," president Carmen Lahale said.

Crown attorney Lori Weitzman described the sentence as "a fair compromise" in which the judge skillfully balanced competing values. Defence lawyer Robert La Haye was also satisfied.

"She is not a criminal. She was a sick person," he said. "....Obviously it is not acceptable to take a life but if it happens, we should not incarcerate sick people."

Mr. Blais's act was unacceptable but understandable, said Mrs. Lahale, who has a 17-year-old autistic son. Parents have to fight just to get minimal services for their autistic children, and as a single mother, Ms. Blais had less support than most. Mrs. Lahale said. "She was alone. It's different. I have a husband who can support me."

But a lack of support is not an acceptable justification for killing a disabled child, said Mr. Graham, whose council is calling for a harsh sentence for Robert Latimer, who will be retried in the fall for killing his daughter, Tracy, who had a severe form of cerebral palsy.

Government cuts to services are "used as an excuse to end the lives of people (who are) vulnerable because of difficulties," Mr. Graham said, arguing that the Latimer and Blais cases seem to illustrate that there is a different standard of what constitutes murder when a disability is involved.

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