A well-known Toronto criminal lawyer suffering from incurable ALS has left a powerful and passionate posthumous message after travelling to Switzerland for help ending his life.

In a three-page letter, Edward Hung gives a harrowing account of his final few months while calling on Parliament to change Canada’s “unjust” laws against assisted suicide.

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“At the time of writing, I have finally satisfied all the requirements for accompanied suicide and it is a great relief,” Hung wrote in the letter he called Approaching Death.

“However, my pride as a Canadian has somewhat diminished after having been on my knees begging to die in another country. This is not fair and I certainly do not wish it upon any of my fellow Canadians.”

The letter was distributed to friends and colleagues in an email Monday, a day after his death.

Last fall, days before he died of a brain tumor, microbiologist Dr. Donald Low made an impassioned video advocating that physician-assisted suicide be legalized. Low died in Toronto.

Hung intended his letter to be read by a broader audience to try to spark more dialogue on the right to life and death, his longtime colleague, Jerry Leung, said Tuesday. “Perhaps Ed’s circumstances and message can spearhead this progress.”

Hung, 62, wrote that while the prognosis varies for the disease — he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, last year — “what is certain . . . is that the degeneration will progress and suffering will be more and more as time goes on. At the time of writing, I have lost the functioning of both my hands.”

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Hung, who left the Attorney General’s office in 1984 to enter private practice, hosted a weekly law program on CHIN radio for many years.

In one high-profile case, Hung defended a woman who drowned her autistic daughter in the tub. Earlier that day, a doctor had said her daughter would need assistance for the rest of her life.

“Given the nature of the disease, it makes sense to me to determine for myself when to leave the world to end my suffering,” he wrote. “My goal is to approach death with a purpose. In fact, having a goal has given me the peace of mind and has diminished my suffering by distraction.”

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Hung described seeking treatment in Israel and, while struggling to walk, travelling to a remote place in China to see a “master miracle doctor” who was anything but. “I left disappointed but comforted by the fact that I had an exit plan in place.”

Unfortunately, “an orderly exit plan in Canada is not possible given our law against assisted suicide. It is an unjust law as it takes away our last right. As a Canadian, I had no choice but to resort to Switzerland.”

Hung also included details of the “laborious, cumbersome, costly and frustrating” steps taken to qualify for accompanied suicide. His daughter, “devastated by what happened, supported me as she knows her dad well. Other friends have tried hard to persuade me not to go. They are of course well-intentioned and kind.”

Hung closed pointing out he had the “good fortune of having the support and resources to enable me to approach death in the way I wanted. However, not everyone in our country is that fortunate,” he wrote.

“This is just not fair. Our Parliament should allow Canadians to have easy access to assistance for their demise and I hope it would come soon.

“I will rest in peace, with no pain, no regrets, and with the comfort that I have been able to approach death with a purpose.”

A memorial is being organized. Leung invited anyone wanting to leave a message or share their experiences with incurable illnesses to email edhung@torontolawteam.com