He Says He Refused a DNR for His Wife Five Times. The Hospital Put It on Her Chart Anyway.

A British Columbia widower says staff at Abbotsford Regional Hospital asked him five times in eight days to put a do-not-resuscitate order on his wife, and that he refused every time. Richard Leskun says that on the last night of her life, a doctor raised assisted death with him, and that he learned the DNR had already been placed on her chart without his consent.

His wife, Marilynn Leskun, was 71. She died in the early morning hours after that conversation, in December 2018. Richard Leskun told his story publicly in early 2023 to The B.C. Catholic, and it drew fresh attention again in October 2026.

Eight days, five requests, five refusals

Marilynn Leskun was already living with dementia when she fell from her wheelchair and broke vertebrae in her neck. She was admitted to Abbotsford Regional Hospital, which is run by Fraser Health, the largest health authority in British Columbia. Her husband of 50 years stayed at her side almost around the clock.

According to his account, over eight days staff asked him five times whether they could put a DNR designation on his wife. He said he objected each time. At a family conference with hospital staff, he spelled out exactly where he stood: “At that meeting, I was very clear: I’m a Catholic and I’m absolutely against medically assisted dying. I’m against euthanasia. I want my wife to live. I want her to continue living. We’ve had a good life for 10 years, even though she has dementia. I was very clear.”

He also said he was not preparing for a death. “I was preparing to take her home again to heal from the broken neck,” he said. “I had a team of friends and caregivers in place to help me.” The day after he asked for her release, he said, she took a bad turn. She developed large purple blotches on her legs and was struggling to breathe.

“I have written orders for medically assisted dying”

Late that night, Leskun said, the hospitalist in charge of her care came to him. “I was absolutely worn, frazzled, completely worn out. I was there every day, almost 24/7, and he said to me, ‘You know, I have written orders for medically assisted dying.'”

He said no. “I was probably too tired to jump down his throat or whatever. I said no, for sure. I was too tired to feel anything. But I was saying no, absolutely not.”

Hours later, when it was clear to him that his wife was dying, he told a nurse he would finally agree to a DNR. The answer stunned him. “The nurse said to me, and this shocked me, the nurse said, ‘Oh, it’s OK, the doctor has already put a DNR on,'” Leskun said. “And this was done without my approval. I never gave consent until that moment.”

Marilynn Rita Marie Leskun died soon after. She left behind her husband and their two adult children.

What the law actually says

Here is the part that should alarm every Canadian family. Under Canadian law, assisted death is supposed to be requested by the patient, not offered to a spouse. Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said the doctor’s offer, if true, would not only have breached Fraser Health’s protocols but would also have led to an illegal act, a homicide. “There’s nothing in law that allows anyone but patients themselves to request an assisted suicide,” he said, adding that the law did not allow advance directives for assisted death either.

Even Dying with Dignity Canada, the pro-euthanasia lobby group, agreed on the rule. Sarah Dobec, a communications specialist with the group, wrote to The B.C. Catholic that “a request for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) must be initiated by the individual” and that “a clinician cannot order an assisted death.” A woman with dementia and a broken neck could not have made that request herself.

The DNR is a different matter, and Fraser Health’s answer on that point is the most revealing thing in the whole story. In a February 2023 email, spokesman Dixon Tam declined to discuss the Leskun case specifically but said that “It is within the scope of practice for physicians or nurse practitioners to select a designation, which includes or does not include cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), based on their clinical judgment of the client’s current health status.” Those decisions are usually reached with families, he said, but “On rare occasions, consensus is not reached.”

In plain English: a family can say no five times, and the doctor can still decide. Tam also said MAiD is always a patient-led process, which is exactly the protocol Leskun says was not followed.

“The letter from Fraser Health chills my soul,” he said. “After Marilynn died I realized that this hospital had seized complete control of her life. Though I tried, I was not able to regain control of her life.”

“The big picture”

Leskun did not file a formal complaint. He did hold a debriefing meeting with seven members of the hospital’s medical staff in March 2019. One line from that meeting stayed with him. The hospitalist told him, “Mr. Leskun, we have to look at the big picture.”

He came to read that as the logic of a state-run system rationing its money and beds. “I believe it is at a point when the system figures that there is too much cost and effort,” he said. He has been careful not to claim that staff deliberately killed his wife, and he declined to blame individuals: “I cannot fault the individual doctors for the ‘sins’ of the institution.”

The B.C. Catholic spent years fighting Fraser Health for its records on assisted death. Previously withheld Fraser Health documents it reported on in January 2023 described MAiD as “an emotionally charged issue” for clinical staff and noted that some care providers faced “ethical dilemmas” over it. By the time Leskun went public, assisted death was being offered in every Fraser Health facility, including hospices, and Tam said the authority offers it “as an end-of-life option in a manner that is safe, respectful, and supportive of patients, families, and providers.”

A system that keeps growing

The scale has only grown since Marilynn Leskun’s death. Health Canada’s sixth annual report counted 16,499 MAiD provisions in 2024, up 6.9 percent from the year before and equal to 5.1 percent of all deaths in Canada. British Columbia accounted for 18.2 percent of the national total.

Leskun’s warning to other families is simple. “Now that the health system offers both death and life, you must speak strongly and clearly if you want life,” he said. And his summary of his wife’s case is harder still: “Gravely wounded, demented or elderly people are at risk of euthanasia in this B.C. health system. Marilynn had all three of those conditions, so it is no wonder she ended up dead.”

A husband says he said no five times, and Fraser Health’s own policy says the doctor could decide anyway.

Editor’s note: This article covers events from December 2018 that Richard Leskun described publicly in early 2023 and that drew renewed attention in October 2026.

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