Suzanne Brake
The former seniors’ advocate likes gardening and knitting and is a big fan of the original ‘Star Trek,’ but her biggest indulgence? Her grandchildren.
Suzanne Brake has spent her whole career advocating for seniors, but she has a lot of youth left in her as well.
Partway through a phone interview last week, a neighbour came to her door and she had to stop to greet them.
“Somebody’s here dropping off my 1973 Raleigh bike. They took it to St. John’s and got it refurbished for me. I kept it all these years,” she explained.
“I’m in love with my bike. I’d never let it go.”
Brake, who recently stepped down as Newfoundland and Labrador’s first seniors’ advocate, says she doesn’t believe in getting rid of older things that she values.
That’s basically her philosophy about seniors.
“I had always gravitated, since early in my education and career, to the impact of discrimination on older people in our society,” said Brake, who received a PH.D. in social work in Calgary 11 years ago. “We call it ageism, but it really is discrimination. I just felt it was so wrong.”
Brake grew up in a large family on Groves Road in St. John’s. Her father was a stationary engineer with the Newfoundland Margarine Company.
“We were probably very poor. I just didn’t know it at the time.”
She says her grandparents would come in from Hant’s Harbour to live with them in the winter, and her aunts and uncles were also a large presence.
“It was very much a respectful, intergenerational experience which really helped to carve who I became in later life,” she said.
“Everybody had to contribute. Everybody had to be part of making it work, and that included our extended family of aunts and uncles and grandparents.
“And we learned tremendous respect.”
As advocate, Brake released her inaugural report in 2019.
She stepped down this year due to health issues.
Brake doesn’t hesitate when asked where she feels society has gone wrong in its treatment of seniors.
“We put a process in place to house people in institutions. And I do believe society thought that was the right thing to do,” she said.
“Institutional long-term care came from the poorhouse movement. It’s the same thing with mental health facilities. Housing everybody together was costeffective and it was felt, well, this is the best thing to do. To this day, I hear families say, ‘Well, I think this has to be the best thing to do.’”
She says we need to stop building long-term care palaces and focus more on smaller facilities and home support.
“As pretty as these buildings can be, as modern as they can be, as professionalized as they can be, they are still institutions.”
That’s why she’s a fan of the 10-year Health Accord launched by Premier Andrew Furey last year. One of its primary focuses has been to find ways to bring health care and supports into the community, rather than removing people from the community and putting them in places most don’t want to be.
“What you’re doing is taking away people’s ability to rehabilitate and become independent again,” she said. “We have to transform the way we see things and do things.”