When Kelsi Sheren returned from serving with the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan and dealing with the pain and trauma of experiencing death up close, she hardly expected to be taking on a second career as a pro-life advocate for veterans and others having medical assistance in dying pushed on them. But in the past few years, the growth of MAiD into every corner of society and health care had a way of finding her.
Fresh from being interviewed by Jordan Peterson, the White Rock woman spoke to The B.C. Catholic about dealing with the trauma of what she experienced in Afghanistan, only to return home and have a friend reach out to tell her that a mutual friend and veteran had been offered euthanasia by Veterans Affairs. He had an audio recording of the conversation and wondered if she would look into it since she had a popular podcast.
“And so I did just that and I became, you know, just very much ‘all in.’ Once you start coming for my people, now you’ve got the wrong person. And by the wrong person, I mean they messed around with the wrong person because I don’t really let things go. And so I got involved.”
She helped bring the incident to light and then got a phone call from a Catholic woman who attended a meeting of retired municipal employees in Surrey. The Fraser Health Authority had given a presentation on euthanasia.
Sheren was appalled and took the matter to Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, which just happened to be writing a story about Brass & Unity, Sheren’s book about serving in the military with British and American troops.
And with that, she was an anti-MAiD crusader.
“It just kept going and growing,” she said, as people sought her out to hear their stories.
Her YouTube show is popular enough that she is now well connected enough that people like commentator Konstantin Kisin want to interview her.
Kisin has become part of Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God Tour,” and as a result, Peterson himself learned about Sheren.
Peterson contacted her on a Friday, and on the following Monday she was on a plane to Austin, Texas, to be interviewed by Peterson about Canada, the military, and MAiD.
Although she hadn’t considered herself pro-life – something she finds hard to square as given her military service as an artillery gunner – she now gives presentations on MAiD across Canada, including in churches.
Although a Catholic from birth, she said she isn’t practising. “I went to Catholic school my entire life,” she said. “After the war … yeah, no.”
There are many facets to her background, from combat veteran and professional fighter to now CEO of a company – Brass & Unity – that turns spent shell casings into jewelry and which has been featured on Good Morning America and Forbes.
She transitioned into a podcaster, which she has enjoyed for the past five years. Now she’s turning health investigator, looking into the Fraser Health Authority’s campaign to promote MAiD, which The B.C. Catholic has also been documenting for several years.
It was through a tip from another soldier that she began hearing about Fraser Health’s activities, which she spoke about on Peterson’s interview.
“I’m a big believer that I’m put in positions for a reason, and I can’t turn a blind eye to this, and so I decided I was gonna take them on.”
She is on the phone regularly with “every doctor, every researcher, every person” who wants to talk. She is learning a lot about Fraser Health and Island Health, which she says is even worse in its approach toward MAiD.
She isn’t ready to release her findings yet, but she said she’s finding financial motivation for the government to promote MAiD. She’s also seeing evidence that MAiD data is being manipulated.
She told Peterson about her recent discovery that the drugs used to induce death by lethal injection can cause an effect “akin to dying by waterboarding or drowning.” She was shocked to hear from Dr. Joel Zivot, a specialist in anesthesiology who has testified about MAiD before the Canadian Senate about the effects of drugs used to end lives.
“Initially he was looking at the postmortem autopsies of lethal injection patients from America and the drugs that they were using,” she said.
The autopsies showed the inmates who had been executed had fluid in the lungs, which causes a sensation of drowning. Similar drugs are used in Canada to administer death through lethal injection in MAiD. As she told Peterson, the reason people who get MAiD “seem peaceful is because they are given a paralytic first so they are completely paralyzed.”
Her interview with Peterson has been viewed more than 225,000 times on YouTube alone, but there has been no interest from Canadian politicians. She has tried to reach out to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, but “it’s been radio silence.”
“I’ve been trying to talk to any politicians who will have a conversation with us. None.”
Unfortunately, “there aren’t a lot of people that want to touch this with a 10-foot pole.”
She vows to continue her research, noting that “we are pushing euthanasia on the most vulnerable population that we’ve ever seen. Canada has officially surpassed the Netherlands in eight years, and they’ve been doing it since the ’70s.”
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