A legacy of life and the need for truth

The timing couldn’t be more striking.

As we honour the retirement of Michele Smillie after nearly three decades of pro-life work for the Archdiocese of Vancouver (see page 2), The B.C. Catholic is also publishing Terry O’Neill’s Page 1 investigation revealing how the B.C. government is quietly promoting euthanasia behind the scenes, with little to no oversight.

Smillie and I both began working for the Archdiocese around the same time, and from the beginning our paths intersected in two essential missions: communicating truth and defending life.

At one point, a friendly rivalry even developed between our offices over which one had the more important mission. With her office’s Pavel Reid backing her, I was outnumbered, but it’s been a privilege ever since to report on the work they carried out.

She started out by assisting Father Joseph Hattie, OMI, in what was then the Office of Marriage and Family Formation. Father Hattie was a force in the Canadian pro-life movement and helped establish Vancouver as a hub of leadership and witness. He also had strong thoughts on media.

I remember a conversation with him in Rome while we were attending the canonization of St. Eugene de Mazenod in 1995. At the time, I was still working in secular journalism and shared how I had become disillusioned. He looked at me and asked whether I prayed for journalists.

Since that moment, praying for journalists has become a part of my spiritual life. Two years after that conversation, I was hired by the Archdiocese as editor of The B.C. Catholic.

Over the years, I’ve seen Smillie’s work become central to the Archdiocese’s pro-life mission. From rallies and conferences to post-abortion healing and education, she has been a steady voice and coordinator of work that has rippled throughout B.C. and beyond. Programs like Rachel’s Vineyard, which she championed despite early controversy, are now seen as essential.

She has always maintained a spirit of hope, which is something the pro-life movement needs to hold onto. As she says in her interview this week, it’s not about the defeats. It’s about the steps forward. And so we continue to take them.

In recent years, those steps have included investigative journalism that the mainstream press refuses to do. Led by veteran reporter Terry O’Neill, we’ve exposed how medical assistance in dying (MAiD) has expanded from a rare exception for the terminally ill into a normalized practice that touches nearly every kind of suffering.

Over the years, through freedom of information requests, O’Neill has revealed how Fraser Health quietly pressured patients toward euthanasia in contradiction to its own “patient-led” policies. He’s reported on palliative care experts who resigned when asked to incorporate MAiD into hospice work.

Now, in his latest report, we’re learning just how deep the rot goes: the province’s MAiD regime has virtually no oversight, and the government appears content to leave it that way.

At a recent Catholic Media Association conference, I told colleagues we’re doing this kind of pro-life journalism because it’s necessary — because the mainstream media won’t. If they were doing their jobs, we could focus our resources on end-of-life coverage with a more spiritual dimension: telling stories of reconciliation, redemption, and grace.

Instead, we get propaganda — sympathetic profiles of couples choosing MAiD together, or adult children encouraging their parents to “move on.”

We don’t hear the stories of good deaths: of priests offering last rites, of spiritual healing, of faith rekindled, of relationships restored in a hospital room.

These stories matter. And we want to tell them. If you know one — if you’ve witnessed a holy death worth sharing — please send it to us at [email protected].

The pro-life community in B.C. is still vibrant. We need your help to keep it that way.

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