Thunder Bay Police at the scene of the Super 8 Motel after the discovery of a deceased 38-year-old woman in one of the rooms Friday, Feb. 5, 2009.SANDI KRASOWSKI/The Canadian Press
Jobless, homeless and stranded in an unfamiliar city, Yanisa Fonteece decided to kill herself with sleeping pills on a glacial day in Thunder Bay a year ago.
She asked her husband not to interfere as she choked and vomited on her motel bed, a picture of Jesus placed near her head.
Peter Fonteece, who is legally blind, waited until her body turned cold. Then, after three unsuccessful attempts to kill himself, he reported his wife's death.
Mr. Fonteece, 47, will appear this morning before Madam Justice Helen Pierce of the Ontario Superior Court for a sentence hearing.
He has pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death, and Judge Pierce, a former social worker, will decide whether Mr. Fonteece has to spend time in jail.
But while a judicial chapter ends in Thunder Bay, questions linger about the couple's case.
For medical ethicist Eike-Henner Kluge, Mr. Fonteece should not have been prosecuted. Unless there is proof that Ms. Fonteece, 39, was mentally incompetent, her husband had no duty to intervene, because her suicide wasn't illegal.
"That would not have amounted to negligence and I'm surprised the husband agreed to the plea," Dr. Kluge said.
For Trudy Beaulne, a community worker in Waterloo, Ont., the case is haunting, a couple pushed to suicide during the economic downturn.
"It's so discouraging and disheartening to think anybody would feel things are so desperate that this is what they have to do."
The Fonteeces lived in Waterloo. He wasn't employed because of his eyesight. She lost her job six weeks before Christmas of 2008, one of 70,600 Canadians who went jobless that month, the worst numbers since the 1982 recession.
Ms. Fonteece was a produce buyer at the Loblaw distribution centre in Cambridge, Ont., said Eileen Druken, who started working there at the same time, in May of 2007.
Ms. Druken often drove Ms. Fonteece to work while she saved for a second-hand car.
Ms. Fonteece was generous with her time, helping Ms. Druken's young son build a model castle for a school project. She was also generous with Ms. Druken, buying her a new DVD player.
But there were sad notes too. The Fonteeces were estranged from their families. They said they didn't have children because of their poor finances.
In November, 2008, Ms. Fonteece lost her job. She told her former colleagues she had a job interview, then they heard no more from her.
Unemployed people who have no close relatives, who are distraught or depressed, often have a hard time finding help, Ms. Beaulne said.
"It's a pity we can't do a review to see the kind of things the community could have done differently."
Around the time Ms. Fonteece was looking for a new job, a family in Saguenay, Que., faced similar turmoil. Unemployed and unable to pay the rent, Marc Laliberté, 46, and Cathie Gauthier, 35, turned to suicide, also killing their three young children in a highly publicized case in December of 2008. Ms. Gauthier survived.
At the start of 2009, the Fonteeces decided to seek a better life in British Columbia. They left on Feb. 1, but their 10-year-old Oldsmobile's heater broke the next day in Thunder Bay.
It was -20C and windy. They checked into the Super 8 Motel and learned they couldn't afford to repair the car.
"Yanisa Fonteece was not happy with the hardships she had encountered in her life and had been contemplating ending her life," prosecutor David MacKenzie later told a court hearing.
After his wife's death, Mr. Fonteece tried to drown himself. At sunset, he took a cab to McKellar Island, a sparsely inhabited area. He tried to hang himself, but the belt he used broke. So he made the 90-minute walk back to the motel.
In the case in Saguenay, because her three children were killed without consent, Ms. Gauthier was found guilty on three first-degree murder charges. She will be jailed with no chance for parole until she turns 60.
An initial charge of assisted suicide against Mr. Fonteece was dropped. In keeping the count of criminal negligence, the Crown said his fault was one of "omission rather than commission."
Dr. Kluge, an ethicist at the University of Victoria, said Mr. Fonteece shouldn't be punished for allowing his wife her legal right to end her life.
Being suicidal didn't make Ms. Fonteece mentally incompetent, he said. "If one evaluates one's life slope and sees it going downhill, it doesn't indicate depression but simply an awareness of a bleak future."
Mr. Fonteece is on bail awaiting sentencing at the John Howard Society's halfway house in Thunder Bay. He does community work and helps with the society's newsletter.
In melancholy Internet posts, he mourns his wife of 20 years. "Her life continues in heaven," he wrote, "and I know she is with me at all times."