'My father IS NOT DYING!!!' Robert Munsch's daughter responds to news he applied for MAID

While globally cherished children’s author Robert Munsch still suffers from a degenerative disease from which he’s chosen to escape through Medical Assistance in Dying,  his daughter made it emphatically clear Tuesday that her father “IS NOT DYING.”

In a Facebook post through the Guelph author’s page, Julie Munsch thanked everyone for the outpouring of well-wishes that followed The New York Times reporting that the 80-year-old had been previously approved for Canada’s MAID program.

“My dad is doing well but of course with a degenerative disease it can begin to progress quickly at any point,” Julie Munsch wrote of her father, who has both dementia and Parkinson’s.

Message from Julie Munsch My father IS NOT DYING!!! Thanks to everyone and their well wishes, however, my father’s...

Posted by Robert Munsch on Tuesday, September 16, 2025

But nowhere in the Times story, she highlighted, does it suggest her father “isn’t doing well, nor that he’s going to die anytime soon!”

She also clarified that her adoptive father made his MAID decision five years ago, which was around the time he was first diagnosed with the degenerative disease. Julie said he discussed his choice during a 2021 CBC interview. (There is no mention of MAID in the text of the story, nor in the audio of his interview with Shelagh Rogers.)

“If I were god, in charge of the world, I would make it illegal,” Munsch told Rogers when asked about his diagnosis.

“I worry about what I’ll be in a year. Will I be a turnip in a bed in a year?”

Munsch, an American who moved to Canada in 1975, penned more than 70 books for kids, including classics like The Paper Bag Princess and Love You Forever.

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