For more than 50 years, Robert Munsch has captured the imaginations of children with his characters’ adventures and escapades.

His enchanting stories, such as ‘The Paper Bag Princess,’ ‘Love You Forever,’ and ‘Something Good,’ have long been a staple of bedtime routines in households across the US and Canada.

The cherished Canadian author has also brought joy to children through school visits, where he would narrate their favorite tales or even create new adventures with the captivated students as the heroes.

But, after publishing a staggering 85 books and selling more than 87 million copies in North America alone, the magic is coming to an end.

Grappling with a dementia diagnosis, Munsch has heartbreakingly revealed that the thing that made him adored by children is no more.

The 80-year-old author has said that his remarkable talent and ability to come up with stories has faded as the debilitating disease grows.

Now, when he waits for a plot to emerge, he simply finds: ‘Nothing happens.’

‘I can feel it going further and further away.’

And it’s a reality that has led him to make a serious decision about his years ahead.

Munsch has applied for and received approval for medically assisted dying (MAID) in Canada, which involves a medical professional aiding a person in ending their life via lethal injection.

It’s a decision he made not long after his dementia diagnosis in 2021. He has since also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Munsch shared how his brother endured a long struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, undergoing numerous treatments.

Witnessing his brother’s prolonged life while his quality of life diminished, Munsch realized that this is not a path he wishes to follow.

‘They kept him alive through all these interventions. I thought, let him die,’ he said.

‘Hello, doc – come kill me! How much time do I have? 15 seconds!’ he joked.

His remarks have sparked a wave of supportive messages for the admired author on social media, leading his daughter, Julie Munsch, to clarify that her father is not near death.

‘My father IS NOT DYING!!!’ she posted on his official Facebook page, adding that the interview does not say ‘my dad isn’t doing well, nor that he’s going to die anytime soon!’

While she thanked people for their concerns, she added that Munsch had chosen to use MAID five years ago.

‘My dad is doing well but of course with a degenerative disease it can begin to progress quickly at any point,’ she said.

It was 2016 when Canada first legalized medically assisted dying for people suffering from terminal illnesses.

Overnight, this changed euthanasia from something classed as murder into a medical practice.

In 2021, it then expanded to include people suffering from serious and chronic physical conditions, even when death is not imminent.

Under MAID, there are five strict criteria someone must meet to be approved for a medically-assisted death including having a ‘grievous and irremediable medical condition’, giving informed consent to receive medical assistance in dying, being eligible for health services funded by a province/territory/the federal government and having made the request voluntarily – not as a result of outside pressure or influence.

The individual must also be at least 18 years old and be mentally competent, meaning they have to be capable of making health care decisions for themselves.

On the day of death – immediately before the drugs are administered – the individual must be able to then actively confirm their consent.

In the case of a degenerative cognitive condition like dementia, this means Munsch would have to die before his condition deteriorates to a point where he is no longer of sound mind.

As of yet, Munsch said he hasn’t set a date but he is aware he will have to decide sometime soon.

‘I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it,’ he said.

‘When I start having real trouble talking and communicating. Then I’ll know.’

Miss the point and his family will be ‘stuck with me being a lump,’ he said.

Two independent doctors or medical staff must confirm all five of the criteria is met before an individual can die under MAID.

If all these are met, there are two methods to choose from: either the medical practitioner directly administers the drug to the individual, usually through injection, or the medical practitioner provides the individual with the drug to administer it themselves.

Typically, the drugs used are simply higher doses of drugs used to treat common ailments such as nausea and pain, the Canadian government website states.

An individual can withdraw their request for a medically-assisted dying at any time.

But, since its introduction in Canada in 2016, medically-assisted dying has come to account for a staggering one in every 20 deaths in the country.

The most recent government data shows 15,300 people died by medically assisted dying in 2023, making up 4.7 percent of all deaths.

Some doctors told The Atlantic they have helped hundreds of people die in the nine years since it was made legal.

With growing normalization brings new ventures, such as nonprofit MAiDHouse offering spaces for people to come to die beyond their home or a hospital.

Tekla Hendrickson, the executive director of MAiDHouse, told The Atlantic that the space and experience can be customized to cater to an individual.

‘Sometimes they have champagne, sometimes they come in limos, sometimes they wear ball gowns,’ she said.

Those in support of medically-assisted dying argue it gives people autonomy over their medical care, when coming to the end of life or suffering from chronic conditions.

But others have sounded the alarm about people ending their lives when they are not close to death – and could have decades left to live.

Perhaps more dystopian, there have been reports where people have chosen death because they can’t afford to live.

In 2022, a 51-year-old woman named Sophia chose a medically assisted death after the government denied her a move to cleaner affordable housing while she was grappling with a chronic diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) – environmental allergies.

‘The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the a**,’ she said in a video taken days before her death and shared with CTV News.

And now, Canada will soon enter new territory.

After multiple delays, people suffering only from a mental illness will also be able to choose a medically-assisted death from March 2027.

And there are also calls from some, such as the organization Dying With Dignity Canada, for MAID to become available for minors with severe medical conditions and who are deemed mature enough to make their own decisions about medical treatment.

Munsch’s sharing of his own story and decision to end his life has shone a renewed spotlight on the complicated, controversial territory of assisted dying.

For him, since his dementia diagnosis, he has stopped doing what he loved and did best: writing children’s stories.

There was one brief moment in 2023 where a story came to him like old times, he told the New York Times. He wrote it down and the book ‘Bounce!’ came out the following year.

But besides that, he hasn’t written in years.

‘I can feel it going further and further away,’ he said of the talent that used to come so easily.

The man who once delighted children with his animated performances and readings of his stories revealed he was recently asked a more sobering question by his seven-year-old grandchild.

Was he going to die?

Munsch’s answer was simple: ‘Yes.’