How to be single, senior, female and thriving
Census finds growing number of elderly women in Canada learning to go it alone
At age 80, Ada Garrison finds herself at a new beginning.
A host of new friends, activities and challenges abound since a health scare prompted her to move into a retirement home in downtown Toronto.
Six months ago she had been living alone in a two-bedroom apartment. Her 54-year-old daughter and grandson were in the unit below, but she saw them rarely, as was the case with her two sons, one of whom lives in New York.
“I felt isolated,” Garrison admits of that time. “My kids were real busy and I could hear them; that was lovely, but the social time with them was skimpy.”
Meanwhile, her own circle of friends was dwindling.
“About half of them have died and that’s another reason that I felt blue. I was trying to make some younger friends, but people are swamped with work and there’s not a lot of leisure time.”
The sociable grandmother moved to a retirement home where she now finds herself “cheek by jowl” with other seniors in an atmosphere she likens to living in a college dormitory. She takes classes and goes on group outings.
Her new daily imperative: make new friends and live life to the fullest.
Garrison is part of a growing group of single senior Canadian women who are redefining what it means to age alone. Their ranks are swelling, according to the latest tranche of data from the 2016 census, released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.
The number of elderly Canadians is soaring — a 19.4-per-cent increase among those 85 and older between 2011 and 2016. Since people are living longer and women tend to outlive men, females have long had to cope with standing alone as they grew old.
Among Canadians aged 85 and older, there were nearly two women for every man in 2016, Statistics Canada found last year. For centenarians, whose ranks grew at a staggering rate of 41.3 per cent, the ratio was five to one. Some are widowed or divorced, others never married. Many have children, but they live far away amid housing and employment pressures. Some liken becoming a single senior to reinventing themselves entirely.
“There is a lot of reinvention because you’ve got another 30 to 35 years of life, and why do what you’ve done before?” says 68-year-old Adina Lebo, who never married and lives alone in Toronto, but finds support from a tight circle of female friends.
Leslie Brodbeck, 71, says she found “a new confidence” after her husband died suddenly of brain cancer in 2008.
“I went to the bank, for instance . . . and negotiated a bridge loan all by myself. I had never done anything like that in my life,” says Brodbeck, who lives in London, Ont. “I want to be a person that’s vibrant and involved, not someone who sits at home and knits.”
And while it’s long been true that the people who approach 100 are mostly women, men are starting to close the gender gap, says Nora Spinks, chief executive officer of the Vanier Institute of the Family.
In 2001, there were 2.3 men for every woman in the 85-and-over group, Statistics Canada said Wednesday. In 2016, that ratio was down to 1.87.
Spinks credits better illness detection, medical treatment and preventative care with pushing male life expectancy to increase at a slightly higher rate than that of women.
But older women still live longer, and many are alone.
Spinks says it’s not surprising many seniors describe feeling a new-found freedom, since it often follows a lifetime of sequential caregiving.
“You’re taking care of others from the time you’re in your 20s — maybe late 20s, early 30s — right through to your 60s, and then all of a sudden, you get to focus on you. And for a lot of women that’s very liberating.”