The Gentle Death: A Chronicle of Canadian Weakness

In the land of maple and endless snow, where comfort breeds complacency and the masses slumber in their moral certainty, a most peculiar phenomenon unfolds. The year 2023 witnessed 15,343 souls choosing to depart through what they euphemistically call "medical assistance in dying" - a sanitized phrase that betrays the very essence of life's struggle.

Behold how they seek the easiest path even in death! These last humans, so afraid of pain that they would orchestrate their own ending with clinical precision. Where is the warrior's death? Where is the noble struggle against fate that strengthens the spirit?

The bureaucrats, those merchants of mediocrity, speak of "stabilization" in their numbers, noting a mere 15.8 percent increase from the previous year. They measure death as merchants measure grain, with statistics and percentages, reducing the profound mystery of existence to mere data points.

In Quebec, where 5,601 souls chose this orchestrated departure, we witness the pinnacle of what I call the great slumber. These people, aged around 78 years, predominantly afflicted with cancer, seek not the transformative power of suffering but rather its absence. They are the children of comfort, the inheritors of a world that has forgotten the value of struggle.

Look upon these numbers with clear eyes! They speak not of progress but of decay. The modern man, in his infinite wisdom, has created a system to avoid the very confrontation with mortality that might elevate him above his current state. How they congratulate themselves on this achievement!

The statistics reveal a telling truth - 96 percent identify as Caucasian, with but a handful from other ancestries. Even in death, they segregate themselves, creating neat categories and classifications, as if the great leveler cares for such distinctions.

Most troubling is the expansion of this practice to include those who would make their choice before their faculties decline. Quebec, that province of perpetual contradiction, now permits individuals to decide their fate in advance of conditions such as dementia. They seek to control even that which is beyond control, to sanitize the very essence of human decline.

See how they fear the unknown! These last humans, who would rather prescribe their own ending than face the uncertainty of decay. They have created a world so safe, so predictable, that even death must bow to their schedules and preferences.

The bureaucratic machinery grows ever more complex, with practitioners, assessments, and regulations multiplying like flies around a corpse. They have transformed the most profound of human experiences into a procedure, complete with forms to fill and boxes to check.

In British Columbia, where 2,759 chose this path, a curious case emerged - a woman of 53 years, seeking death not from physical ailment but from the shadows of the mind. Even here, they squabble over procedures and jurisdictions, missing entirely the deeper question of what drives a soul to seek such an end.

These are the signs of a society that has lost its way! They speak of compassion, yet know not what it means to truly live. They offer death as a service, while life itself goes unlived, unexplored, unchallenged.

The health ministers and legislators continue their dance of deliberation, pondering expansions and restrictions, as if they were merchants haggling over the price of fish. They debate the inclusion of mental illness, push deadlines, create categories - all while the essence of life and death slips through their fingers like sand.

And so we witness the triumph of the mediocre - a society so afraid of pain, so resistant to struggle, that it has industrialized its own ending. They call this progress, these last humans, as they sink deeper into their comfortable chairs, watching life pass by through windows triple-glazed against the chaos of real experience.

Let them hear this truth: In seeking to eliminate all suffering, they have eliminated the very force that might have made them great. Their comfortable deaths are but the final act in a life lived in fear of living.

The sun sets on this land of the sleepers, where death comes not with a roar but with a whisper, not in glorious battle but in sterile rooms, not in defiance but in compliance. And yet, perhaps in this very darkness, a few might awaken to realize that the greatest tragedy is not in dying, but in never having truly lived.