The quiet price of more solo living
CALGARY— For the past few days, Morgan Pearson has unpacked boxes and arranged furniture in the Calgary apartment he recently moved to. At 53 years old, it will be the first time he has lived alone since 2011, before he separated from his spouse and moved in with friends.
“I’m an introvert by nature with extrovert tendencies. So living alone is actually kind of nice for me. I don’t mind it,” he said. “But you know, I do get lonely.”
He’s happy about his new living arrangement, mostly, he said, but it’s hard work to make sure alone time doesn’t veer into isolation.
Pearson’s situation isn’t unusual in Canada — one-person households are a growing trend across the country. That’s a big part of the reason he helped cofound a Calgary-based non-profit last year called Never Alone Peer Support, where members meet each Tuesday to share stories and talk about life.
According to a Statistics Canada report released last Wednesday, more people are living alone than ever before, and one-person dwellings are becoming the most common household configurations. The findings were based on data from the General Social Survey (Families) 2017 and the 2016 Census. It also saw the number of Canadians living alone — nearly four million — more than double since 1981. People living alone make up 28 per cent of households across the country.
However, Albertans like Pearson are bucking the trend — they are slightly less likely to live alone and they have the lowest shares of one-person households among the provinces, with 24 per cent of households consisting of one person.
The census data shows that couple households with children still dominate the Alberta landscape — they made up 29.4 per cent of the population. Mean- while, the highest percentage of oneperson households is Quebec with 33.3 per cent, followed by the Yukon with 32.2 per cent, Nova Scotia with 29.5 per cent and British Columbia with 28.8 per cent. Ontario is at 25.9 per cent.
Nora Galbraith, a senior analyst at Statistics Canada, said the age of a population is a “key player” in terms of how many people might live alone in a region.
For example, Alberta has one of the lowest rates of seniors — the population most likely to live alone — which could account for the low rate of one-person households and individuals living by themselves.
“Alberta has a relatively young population within Canada. It’s one of the few places where there are still more children in the population than seniors,” Galbraith said. “That’s a big factor behind why Alberta has a relatively low share of people living alone.”
However, Galbraith said the census data only highlights a certain point in time of a population, and that circumstances for people’s living arrangements can often change.
For example, the report suggested that 60 per cent of Canadians aged 20 to 34 who lived alone and were not in a couple relationship in 2017 intend to one day marry or remarry. More than 70 per cent of that population group said they might one day live in a common-law relationship.
The report also ruled out gender as a determining factor for living alone — men and women were equally likely to live alone across Canada. But, the number of men who live alone (especially among seniors) has increased, partially due to longer life expectancy, which has resulted in proportionally fewer senior women living alone as widows. However, women living alone were almost twice as likely to be seniors, according to the report.
Galbraith said the trend toward oneperson homes isn’t necessarily surprising.
“It’s been a very, very long-term trend over the last 100 years or so. Again, most of it relating to shifts in the population becoming older. But there’s also been a lot of different societal trends and evolution that have contributed,” she said.
“Now in more recent years, (with) the advent of social media, it’s easier for people to live alone, but maintain contact with the outside world easily,” she said. “Things like improvements in life expectancy, that’s meant more people living alone in their senior ages; things like introduction of no-fault divorce has led to more people living alone following a separation or divorce.”
She noted that as the country has become more urban, there has been a surge in the number of highrise apartments and condominiums, which are often geared toward single-person dwellings.
The increase of seniors living alone might prompt emerging problems in the future, she added, and all of the population who do live alone often have close relationships — even if they don’t live with those people. But Scott McKeen, an Edmonton councillor and a champion of initiatives in the city that look at mental health and urban isolation, said loneliness is an epidemic hitting the country hard and the number of people living in a household doesn’t necessarily determine a person’s feelings of loneliness.
“Living alone or living in households with more than one person, I don’t think that’s really the issue,” he said. “There are people who will feel lonely in a crowd.”
McKeen suggested that municipalities need to reconsider how their communities are designed if they want to lower feelings of isolation.
“Do we design them to encourage people to talk to each other (or) do we design neighbourhoods so people could drive right into their front garage and walk right into their house?” he said.
He also recommends that people, regardless of their living circumstances, should reach out and create social connections.
“To me, the easiest answer out of this for any individual is to find an opportunity to volunteer, be of service to your community. And that’ll not only have you bumping into other people, it will also get you out of your loneliness.”
For Pearson, who said he suffers from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, having a social network to lean on can be critical to someone’s well-being — including his own.
After he and his wife separated a year and a half ago, he said he went through a severe mental-health crisis — he was suicidal and had to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.
As Pearson got better, he moved in with friends before moving out on his own, but co-founded his group to create a space to help combat lurking feelings of loneliness.
“That’s also where (the) group comes in real handy, too, because there’s the social aspect of it,” he said. The group is open to anyone in any living situation who wants to build a sense of community and belonging.
“When you’re involved with somebody who doesn’t suffer (from a mental illness), they don’t get it … Being around people who understand, who suffer from the same thing, it really does help.”
“Being around people who understand, who suffer from the same thing, it really does help.” MORGAN PEARSON CO-FOUNDER OF PEER SUPPORT GROUP