While studying at Queen's University, Downie volunteered at Kingston General Hospital as a candy striper. While there, she saw an advertisement for palliative care volunteers and trained to become one.[1] After earning her Bachelor of Arts and Master's degree, Downie earned her M.Litt at the University of Cambridge. Upon her return to Canada, Downie accepted a position as a research associate at the Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values.[2]
Career
After law school, Downie clerked for Chief Justice Lamer at the Supreme Court of Canada, and after graduate school she was the director of Dalhousie Health Law Institute.[3] In 2004, she published "Dying Justice: A Case for Decriminalizing Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Canada."[4] In her role as director, she was selected to be a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy[5] and sat on the Experts Committee for Human Research Participant Protection in Canada.[6] In 2010, Downie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.[7]
In 2015, Downie was involved in the result of Carter v Canada. She served as a Special Advisor to the Canadian Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide and worked with the pro bono legal team in the case.[8] In the same year, Downie became the first scholar in Nova Scotia to be named a Pierre Trudeau Trudeau Foundation Fellow.[9] She used this fellowship to gather data regarding assisted dying in Canada.[10] She also sat on the Provincial-Territorial Expert Advisory Group on Physician-Assisted Dying.[11] The next year, she received the 2016 CIHR Barer-Flood Prize in Health Services and Policy Research.[12] On July 1, 2016, Downie was appointed to University Research Professor for a five-year period.[13]
