Time to act on seniors’ housing needs
No one should live as a stranger in a strange town where they have no family
There are many steps to making Hamilton the best place to raise a senior. Let’s start by letting them age in place.
My best friend is home this week from the land that stole her, a.k.a. the land down under, a.k.a. Australia. She left us here back in the 90s when her love and life changed direction and she has been living it up down there with the love of her life, Stewart, ever since.
She is the best Grade 2 teacher ever and in the Catholic system that means the best First Communion teacher too, planning life-giving liturgies for the children and tolerating, with love, the parents who still insist on dressing their kids as brides and grooms of Christ and rewarding them with money for doing something they will, sadly, forget the meaning of far too soon.
She carried that vocation on when she left Canada but now she teaches all those little Aussie kids who have been blessed to have her about her home country and beavers and Maple Leafs (both tree and sport) and Robert Munsch and Land of the Silver Birch folk songs and so many other wonderful treasures we sometimes overlook after Grade 2.
Leisa taught me many folk songs and she even taught me how to play them on the guitar through a lesson of forgiveness and understanding on top of chording and strumming.
I told the story of my first guitar lesson with her when I gave the toast to the bride after her sweet, sweet mom and dad walked her up the aisle at her wedding in Owen Sound — the wedding that should have taken place in a Catholic Church but wouldn’t because of her beloved spouse’s marital status and an annulment process that, more often than not, marginalizes innocent lovers in a dangerous time.
We met the first day of New Testament Theology with S. Marie-Anne Quenneville at Brescia University College, London. We recognized immediately we were the funniest people in the class so that was that — bonds of deep and abiding friendship that would never end. Not long after we sat on the bed in her dorm room, finding out about each other’s musical interests when she asked me if I knew how to play the guitar.
“Sure, I do,” I lied. I did play piano and trumpet well enough. I’d also often picked up the sparsely-strung guitar left behind by my stepbrother, Billy, who moved away when I was a toddler and had died by suicide just two years before I made it into university by the skin of my teeth and my mother’s fierce love and tenacity.
When I proclaimed with certainty I knew how to play the guitar, there was no instrument in sight. Upon my pronouncement, Leisa reached under the bed to pull hers out and said, “Great! Let’s play!”
I held it like I’d seen on TV and mimicked in my basement all those years ago but had no clue how to make it sing. I was caught. I told Leisa the lie. She smiled and said, “Well, let’s make sure you never have to lie about that again! Hold your hand here and that’s a C-chord.” Unforgettable lessons in life.
Leisa has come home regularly over the years. She came home to visit her dying dad and returned soon after for his funeral. She came home to stand beside me while I proclaimed my marriage vows to Renée. This time she is home because her 97-year old mother has moved into a long-term care facility.
Genevieve Elizabeth Watson and Melville Stewart Henry bought their first and only house in Owen Sound in the 1940s and turned it into a home overflowing with milk and honey and muffins and faith, love and charity, and Leisa and four other kids to soak it all in.
Gen stayed in the house until 2013, 10 years after Mel died, but eventually had to concede safety concerns meant her days of independence were done. She moved into Kelso Villa just a few blocks from the shores of her beloved Sound.
Now in need of greater care, Gen’s faithful kids followed the process set up by our Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and found the only bed for their mom was in Kincardine. Gen now lives, and ultimately will die, as a stranger in a strange town where she has no kin.
These are painful times for Leisa and her family and for thousands of families in the same situation across our province. It’s especially true here in Hamilton where the population of seniors is growing at a faster rate compared to the rest of the country according to new census data from StatsCan.
There are many steps to making Hamilton the best place to raise a senior. Let’s start by letting them age in place.
Deirdre Pike is a freelance columnist with The Hamilton Spectator. She longs to make Hamilton the best place to raise a senior, a lesbian, an Indigenous person, a child … You can reach her at dpikeatthespec@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @deirdrepike.