Alan Nichols Asked His Brother to ‘Bust Him Out.’ A Canadian Hospital Euthanized Him Instead.

Alan Nichols was 61, hard of hearing since childhood and long troubled by depression, but he was not dying. In June 2019 he was admitted to Chilliwack General Hospital in British Columbia, and he asked his brother to “bust him out” as soon as possible. About a month later, on July 26, 2019, medical staff ended his life with a series of injections under Canada’s medical assistance in dying law.

His euthanasia application, according to the Associated Press, listed only one health condition as the reason for his request: hearing loss. His family has spent years asking how that was allowed to happen. The case is seven years old, but it has drawn renewed attention as Canada’s program keeps expanding, and it remains one of the clearest illustrations of what critics have warned about from the start.

From a hospital bed to a death date

Chilliwack sits about 60 miles east of Vancouver. Nichols had brain surgery at age 12, lost his hearing, and later received a cochlear implant. He developed depression and took medication for it, but after his father died in 2004 he was inconsistent about taking his antidepressants, according to EWTN News, which reported the family’s account in September 2019.

In mid-June 2019, he was found at home in poor physical condition and admitted to the hospital. The AP reported that he was hospitalized over fears he might be suicidal. Within a month, he had submitted a request to die.

On July 22, a doctor phoned the family to say the euthanasia was scheduled in four days. According to CTV News, as cited by EWTN, two doctors approved the application, and a psychologist and a psychiatrist assessed his competence. His death certificate lists stroke, seizure disorder and frailty as antecedent causes. A nurse practitioner’s assessment, the AP reported, noted his history of seizures, frailty and “a failure to thrive,” and the AP said he was put to death “despite concerns raised by his family and a nurse practitioner.”

“He still had living to do”

The family did not support the decision and could not stop it. His sister-in-law, Trish Nichols, described the man she saw in that hospital in plain terms: “Alan was capable of talking, he was sitting up, he was eating, he was going to the bathroom,” she said, as quoted by EWTN. “I knew by looking at him that he still had living to do.”

“He was not near the end of his life,” she said. “We spent 50 years helping Alan live, and in one month they signed his death warrant.”

His brother Gary was just as blunt. “He didn’t have a life-threatening disease,” he said, adding, “I didn’t think he had a sound mind at all.” Gary described a pattern familiar to anyone who has loved someone with depression: stretches when Alan did well, followed by relapses into isolation, “not seeing anybody, not eating properly.” He said he “never thought” his brother would be approved even if he applied.

Speaking to the AP in 2022, Gary summed it up: “Alan was basically put to death.”

Police said he “met the criteria”

The family reported the case to police and health authorities, arguing that Alan lacked the capacity to consent and was not suffering unbearably, both legal requirements. According to EWTN, they say police pointed them to the provincial health ministry. The AP reported that an officer eventually told the family the documentation showed Nichols “met the criteria” for euthanasia.

University of Toronto health law professor Trudo Lemmens told the AP it was “astonishing” that authorities concluded the death was justified. Nothing in the reporting indicates that anyone was held accountable.

The guardrails that came down

When Nichols died, Canadian law still required that a patient’s natural death be “reasonably foreseeable.” Parliament removed that requirement entirely when it passed Bill C-7 on March 17, 2021. Today, according to the Justice Department, the law “no longer requires a person’s natural death to be reasonably foreseeable as an eligibility criterion for MAID.” People whose only condition is a mental illness are currently scheduled to become eligible on March 17, 2027.

The numbers have climbed steadily. Health Canada’s latest annual report counted 16,499 assisted deaths in 2024, or 5.1 percent of all deaths in the country. Of those, 732 were for people whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable, a category that grew 17.1 percent in a single year.

Disability advocates have warned about this for years. Tim Stainton of the University of British Columbia told the AP the law was “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.” German law professor Theresia Degener put it more quietly: “The implication of Canada’s law is that a life with disability is automatically less worth living.”

Alan Nichols was a lonely, depressed, deaf man who had been found in bad shape and brought to a hospital for help. The people closest to him say he wanted to go home. A system that should have treated his depression and listened to his family approved his death within weeks.

A hospital that should have treated his depression helped him die instead, and nothing on the record shows anyone has answered for it.

Editor’s note: This article covers the July 2019 death of Alan Nichols in British Columbia, which drew renewed attention in October 2026.

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