Family Says Canada Euthanized a Christian Grandmother Who Wept ‘I’ve Made a Mistake’

An 83-year-old Christian grandmother in Ontario died by medical assistance in dying on July 10, 2026, and her granddaughter says she never truly consented. Brigitte Stegemann, who had once flatly refused assisted death, broke down two days before the procedure and cried, “I’ve made a mistake,” according to her granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk. Belleville Police now say the case is open and under investigation by their Criminal Investigations Division.

Kranendonk, who had been her grandmother’s caregiver for 12 years and her medical power of attorney for the last six, told her story to the Daily Mail in a detailed interview published September 20, 2026. What follows is her account. The care home and the practitioners involved have not commented publicly, but they are understood to maintain that Stegemann legally consented.

“No, I don’t want that”

Stegemann, known to her family as “GG” or “Oma,” was German-born, devout, and living at The Pearl, a residential care home in Cannifton, near Belleville. In February 2026 she was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. Doctors were unsure whether that meant six months or as long as two years.

Kranendonk says she talked through every option with her grandmother, including MAiD, and that the answer was clear: “No, I don’t want that.” Her faith, and the fear of displeasing God, was a large part of why. That same February, after being fitted with a medical port, Stegemann repeatedly ripped it out, screaming, “I don’t want the death shot!”

A phone call during a road trip

In June, Kranendonk and her husband left on a 10-day road trip. She says the home’s calls during that time mentioned nothing dramatic, only that her grandmother had fallen and would need a wheelchair. Then, on July 3, near the end of the trip, the home called to say it was going to book a MAiD assessment. When she got back, she learned her grandmother had already had her first MAiD consultation. “No one called me,” she said.

She was in the room for the second assessment. She says the doctor spoke in “really loose terms, never using the words death or dying,” describing medicine that would make her feel at peace. Stegemann’s first language was not English, Kranendonk noted, and she was severely hearing-impaired.

Then came the cognitive test meant to establish that she was capable of consenting. By Kranendonk’s account, the questions were personal ones nobody at the home could check, such as how many siblings she had. Stegemann said she had none. She actually had 13, and two were still alive; she had seen one of them only six weeks earlier. In Kranendonk’s words, her grandmother “got every question wrong.”

Kranendonk was asked to leave the room while the doctor finished. Four minutes after the test ended, she says, the doctor announced Stegemann had been “deemed fit for MAiD, and we’re going to proceed.” Later that same day, Stegemann mixed up the names of her own daughter and granddaughter. The procedure was set for Friday, July 10, at 11 a.m. A nurse later called to propose moving it up a day because the doctor had an opening; the family refused so her pastor and son could be there.

Kranendonk says the paperwork was completed without any family present, and that she has never been allowed to see the consent form her grandmother allegedly signed. “I don’t know who the witness was. I don’t know how they explained the paperwork to her,” she said. She also says it was the home’s very first MAiD procedure.

“Do you know that you’re going to die on Friday?”

Two days before the procedure, Kranendonk decided to be blunt. “I said: ‘Do you know that you’re going to die on Friday?'” Her grandmother cried for 45 minutes. “She was bawling. Inconsolable,” Kranendonk said. “I’ve made a mistake,” Stegemann told her.

On the morning of July 10, the family shared strawberry ice cream with her in the garden while the pastor prayed. At 9:30 a.m., Kranendonk says, the MAiD nurse called them inside to start the IV, well before the doctor was due. The nurse struggled to find a vein in the right arm and, by Kranendonk’s account, “poked her about three or four times with the needle” before switching arms. “There was a phenomenal amount of blood,” she said. “It is all over my Oma’s arm, it is all over her nightie, soaking through her pillow, all over the sheets.” The nurse, she says, was not wearing gloves.

When the doctor arrived and asked whether it was all right to give her the “medicine,” Kranendonk says her grandmother did not move, open her eyes, nod or speak. “The doctor just said: ‘Okay, well, I’m going to proceed.'” Stegemann was pronounced dead within 10 minutes, her hands clasped in prayer. “She did not consent the morning of the procedure,” Kranendonk said.

The investigations

Kranendonk is appealing to Ontario’s Chief Coroner, the Patient Ombudsman and Belleville Police. According to The Christian Post, the family’s August complaint to the coroner asks for a MAiD Death Review Team investigation on three grounds: lack of capacity to consent, the bypassing of her power of attorney, and no final express consent. A Belleville Police spokesman told the Daily Mail: “This incident is currently open and under investigation with our Criminal Investigations Division.”

Kranendonk believes the staff were ideologically committed to the procedure. “She was a vulnerable human being, and they saw an opportunity,” she said. Of one nurse: “I truly believe that one nurse really saw us as an obstacle.” She says she did not know she could have sought a court injunction. “I was flying blind.”

This is not happening in a small, careful program. Health Canada’s sixth annual report on MAiD counted 16,499 assisted deaths in 2024, about one in every twenty deaths in the country. Under Canada’s own rules, a patient must be capable of making decisions about their health, and a request can be withdrawn at any point. If a woman who could not name her living siblings, and who wept that she had made a mistake, cleared that bar, the bar is not a safeguard.

She said no, she said she’d made a mistake, and she said nothing at all on the last morning, and Canada’s system heard yes every time.

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