Robert Munsch plans to die by MAID, and Canadians are weepy

What Margaret Atwood is to dystopian fiction, Robert Munsch is to children’s lit. The author of tiny tot tomes like The Paper Bag Princess, Mortimer and Thomas’ Snowsuit has inspired the imaginations and Halloween costumes of Canadian kids for the past forty years. So news that he plans to die by MAID hit like the last few pages of Love You Forever. Only, in this case, Munsch is the beloved mom and we’re the self-involved kid coming to grips with the cruelty of life and longing for the days that revolved around making a mess with toilet paper.

Related: The doctors who assist in MAID on what it’s like to end a life

Munsch, who went public with his dementia diagnosis in 2021, recently shared an update with New York Times journalist (and fellow Canadian) Katie Engelhart. He explained how he’d been approved for MAID shortly after his diagnosis but will still have to get the timing right: Canadian law requires active consent on the day of death, which means people with degenerative cognitive conditions risk missing a window. Munsch said that when he loses the ability to communicate, he’ll know it’s time to go. Either that or “you’re stuck with me being a lump,” he joked to his wife, Ann, who sat with him during the interview.

So far, the reactions to Munsch’s planned death have been overwhelmingly sentimental and supportive, which serves as further evidence of the author’s hold on our heartstrings—especially considering most conversations around MAID become arenas for political axe-grinding. There’s not much consensus on the appropriate parameters for dignified dying, but everyone agrees that Prince Ronald was, in the words of the Paper Bag Princess, “a bum.” With so much division dominating headlines these days, leave it to Canada’s toddler troubadour to remind us of the things that unite us.