Like many Canadians who watched news footage of nursing homes during the COVID-19 lockdown—the blurred faces looking out at families on the other side of the window; the masked and exhausted staff; the terrifying ongoing tally of the infected and dying—I made a pact with myself that there would be no old-age home in my future. How I’d make that so, however, was as blank as a sheet of paper. Or it was until the cold Tuesday afternoon I joined the raucous soup social at the Stanley Knowles co-op in midtown Toronto.
On the outside, the co-op is a nondescript brown-brick low-rise. But inside is a social movement that could change the future for the 2.5 million Canadians moving into their peak care years like a thundering avalanche (the silent generation we are not). Many of those older Canadians are moving out of their single-family homes and into multi-residential buildings, looking for the same kinds of things: a turnkey operation, so they can spend less time on maintenance; no stairs; less economic pressure; easy access to amenities; and, especially, a built-in community of people who value their autonomy and independence. People who are prepared to “do everything they can” to avoid being housed in an institutional setting, according to a National Institute on Aging and Canadian Medical Association survey of Canadians sixty-five and over.
