His life and his passing are marked by a simple plaque at Hillcrest Cemetery in Whakatane.

Ernest ‘Ernie' Massie Izett, it reads. Died April 2017. He shares the plot and the plaque with his 'dearly loved wife”, Jean Margaret.

Ernest, farmer, builder, family man. A thinking man, a man of conviction. What that plaque doesn't allude to is the forceful personal campaign this man waged in support of a person's right to die – euthanasia. It was a campaign fought in life, but fascinatingly continues in death, and that's only now coming to light.

'As a child, I remember him saying we dispatch suffering animals out of kindness,” says daughter Janne Izett, 'but we let humans, people dear to us suffer.

'We can't help them because it's against the law. As a hugely pragmatic man who chose science and facts over spiritualism, he could never reconcile that.”

In a twist of fate on April 29, 2017, Ernest Massie Izett, euthanasia campaigner, moved centre-stage in his own right to life drama.

'My dear Janne and families,” he would write in a note seized by police. 'I have enjoyed my life in spite of two concussions, 29 falls, in and out of 17 hospitals, 12 surgeries and 10 anesthetics. I am 91-years-old. I never expected to reach 80.”

The note was a suicide note.

'This is a huge effort to write this, my last note, so goodbye all, and thanks once again. Ernest Massie Izett.” That day Ernest died at his own hand, in a rest home.

'He waited until I was at work and he was alone,” says Janne. 'He did not want to implicate anyone.” The law prevents The Weekend Sun from saying how he died. However, just previously, while changing his bed, Janne and a nurse found a plastic bag concealed in his pillow case.

'He was quite up front about it,” she says. 'He told us it was his euthanasia kit.” She was surprised to find the bag, but not surprised at his plan. 'Because that's the sort of person he was – a pragmatist.

'He had total control of his mental faculties. His one good eye was failing him, he couldn't read or watch TV, he was very deaf and couldn't converse or listen to his music. It's not about having nothing to live for, but has everything to do with quality of life. His enjoyment of life had gone.”

This was a proud man, who Janne says had been put under 24-hour watch after the discovery of the plastic bag. 'They took his belt, but he wasn't silly,” she says. 'He understood why. He just didn't want to vegetate in a rest home hospital bed needing someone to wash him, wipe his bum and feed him.”

Shortly before taking his own life, Ernest Massie Izett made an appointment with a Justice of the Peace. 'He wanted to tell the JP that as a person of sound mind, he wanted the right to be able to say 'I have had enough – I want to go' and not be kept alive against his will.”

The JP explained the law to Ernest Izett. 'But Dad said he didn't care,” says Janne, 'and that he was firm on his views.” As he indicated in his final note: 'We have only one chance of life and I shall not be blind and a burden on others.”

Those views were expressed in a sad but defiant letter to the editor of The Weekend Sun on Friday, July 10, 2010. 'In the 1980s I was having a problem with my beautiful wife of 38 years of marriage, who was dying of motor neuron disease,” it read. 'She often pleaded with me to end her life, but of course I could not, as I would be liable.”

'It was very hard,” says Janne. 'Mum was conflicted because she wanted to stay alive for the arrival of a grandchild. On the other hand she was scared about how much suffering she could endure.

'She asked a nurse friend to help her die. She said she couldn't. She asked us. We said we couldn't because it was against the law. She wanted to go peacefully. It was a long, horrible process.”

Ernest was a loving husband, but torn, and it was a dilemma that would assist this self-confessed atheist and evolutionist in cementing his attitude on a very polarising issue.

'I read in a newspaper here in Tauranga, about three or four years ago, that about 700 doctors had performed euthanasia,” he wrote in his letter to the editor. 'And I totally agree.” He also declared his support for the controversial Dr Death – the American pathologist and euthanasia proponent Dr Jack Kevorkian, who claimed to have helped 130 patients with physician assisted suicide.

'Dying is not a crime,” was his catch phrase.

Then Ernest Izett pitched in behind Leslie Martin, the woman who confessed to injecting her terminally ill mother with an overdose of morphine. 'Later Leslie was incarcerated for her act,” says Ernest's letter. 'A grave injustice!”

Ernest Massie Izett's views were strongly held, and he demonstrated his feelings by giving hundreds of dollars to Leslie Martin's cause.

Did Ernest have the dignity in death that he so passionately campaigned for?

'Well, he did it with his own hand – he took responsibility for his own life.” says Janne. She is deeply sad but at the same time profoundly proud.

'But boy, his head would have been fighting his heart, because the natural instinct is a survival one, to gasp for air. So he was very strong and very resolute to go to that extreme.”

It also tells us, according to Janne, that he was a man of deep conviction, of strong, unshakeable views. 'Even though not everyone agrees with those views,” she says.

'He was a good honourable man with good morals, and he was honest. He just wanted the world to be a fairer and better place and he did not want people to be led by the nose. He wanted people to think things through for themselves.”

Ernest Massie Izett was a non-drinking, non-smoking ex-man of the land, who, unusually for a 91-year-old, took no medication apart from a sleeping pill. Honey, vitamins and a dumbbell fashioned from a water-filled bottle for exercise were his preferences.

Ernest would have taken great pride from the fact that, a year after his passing, he is still contributing to the debate on dying with dignity, that his attitude still counts.

That's because a Canterbury academic uncovered his case in researching rest home suicides. Between 2007 and 2012, suicides by older people in residential care were uncommon. But Ernest was one of nine people living in aged care facilities who killed themselves between 2016 and 2017. That could be down to older people moving to rest homes later in life and in worse health.

Ernest's story is not a statement on those who cared for him. In fact, in his final note, he thanked them.

But for a daughter, it all sits very hard. 'It would have been much kinder for everyone if he'd been able to say ‘this is it' and had an injection with all his family around him,” says Janne. 'It would have been much, much better for everyone.”