Labor of Love


	John Hofsess, founder of the DeathNet website, at Ross Bay Cemetery, the oldest graveyard in Victoria, British Columbia. (Photograph by Mark Van Manen)

n 1990, an ailing, elderly couple tied themselves together and jumped off a 14th-floor balcony in Victoria, British Columbia. The event barely registered in the public consciousness, but the desperation of the act made a lasting impression on John Hofsess, 57, a writer who had abandoned his Toronto-based career to care for his ailing 80-year-old mother in Victoria.

John recalls an indifferent medical bureaucracy sputtering "inane platitudes," turning his mother's slow death into a cruel, inhuman farce. This experience provoked him to think about the ignominy of most modern deaths -- and, eventually, to disseminate his moral meditations on the World Wide Web.

"Death is one of very few universal human experiences," says John, now executive director of the Right to Die Society of Canada. He founded the DeathNet website a year ago to "challenge the pervasive cultural denial about death. The medical profession in particular," he says, "has not come to grips with the fact that people die. People are turning to our website because they want an honest dialogue."

DeathNet, which John claims has "the world's largest collection of right-to-die materials and services on the Internet," has been honored with numerous national and international recognitions. It has also been a lightning rod for the international censorship debate swirling around the Internet. Suicide-prevention bureaucrats within the Canadian government have called for an outright ban of the site, arguing that the materials available there might convince depressed people to kill themselves.

John is unapologetic. He says that DeathNet has a more restrictive policy than bookstores do about selling books such as Final Exit, a primer on suicide. Furthermore, DeathNet will not send its manuals to anyone who has not been a member of a right-to-die organization (such as the 57,000-member Hemlock Society) for at least three months. The National Death Center in London, England, recognized DeathNet for its innovative "Garden of Remembrance," an online cemetery where the living memorialize the dead. John conceived and posted the garden in honor of his late mother.


	Anita Bundy, a member of Canada's Right to Die Society, and John Hofsess, the group's executive director, demonstrate an "exit bag," a common method for ensuring asphyxiation in assisted suicide. "The one indisputable human right," says John, "is the right to say, 'No more.' " (Photograph by Mark Van Manen)


	A walk along Victoria Harbor's breakwater offers a refreshing respite for John Hofsess and friend Evelyn Martens. "You might think," John suggests, "that death affects only a minority of people -- of which you are not one." (Photograph by Mark Van Manen)


	On his DeathNet website, John Hofsess created a "Garden of Remembrance," an online cemetery where the living memorialize the dead, in honor of his late mother. (Photograph by Mark Van Manen)

http://www.islandnet.com/deathnet/