Photo by Leonid Iastremsky/Alamy Stock Photo

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered some of the many disparities affecting Canadian society today. One of the most outstanding examples of this are the deficiencies exposed in senior care facilities and the subsequent calls for aging in place from experts and seniors alike. (Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta observed the highest rate of seniors who perished as a consequence of COVID-19 while living in long-term care or retirement homes.)

But according to Sue Lantz, founder and managing director of Collaborative Aging, a Toronto-based consulting firm helping seniors “shape [their] own aging experience,” the options available to age in place are limited—and the price tag high.

To age in place, seniors need more than wheelchair- accessible ramps and automatic doors. “You also need to combine that with the right support. And those right supports take the form of social connections, a caregiving team, including home care, and your healthcare access,” Lantz says.

In Options Open, her five-strategy framework, Lantz defines the foundations to age in place as health, housing, social networks, caregiving teams, and resources. “The resources can be everything from your money—but also government funding or insurance plans, or other ways to resource the care or even the house,” she says, highlighting that housing is “like the platform on which the other supports can be mixed and matched.”

As nearly 50 percent of millennials in Canada seem to be delaying their entry into the housing market for various reasons, their retirement options may be undermined. In Canada, access to home ownership is increasingly limited by student debt and precarious employment. For many Albertans, the boom-and-bust economy in the province makes home ownership even harder to attain.

To thrive, seniors need to live in accessible and affordable housing located in walkable neighbourhoods with easy access to services and amenities. But if finding these conditions can be a challenge for anyone earning less than the median income in Alberta’s largest cities, what can less affluent millennials expect when they start turning 65 in 2046? Many young Albertans are anxious for what lies ahead.

For Inés Hernández-Virla and her husband, Luis Virla, home ownership seems a far-fetched dream. Originally from Venezuela, the couple has lived in Calgary since 2014, when Virla was accepted to a PhD program in chemical engineering at the University of Calgary.

Seven years and two children later, they’re still unable to afford a home in any of the walkable neighbourhoods that suit their needs and aspirations in Calgary. Part of the problem, Hernández-Virla says, is that many immigrants are starting from zero. “People born here started working and accruing wealth very young.… This is very difficult for immigrants who arrive here when they’re 30.”

Despite both being employed in chemical engineering, the couple worries about their future prospects—and their children’s. “Lacking access to home ownership limits the capital our children will have to thrive when they grow up,” says Virla.

But at least the Virlas don’t have outstanding debt. For other young Albertans, such as Mitch Dexter, paying back student loans undermines his expectations for building a future. “I don’t feel that it’s really a financial feasibility for me to be planning more than a year in advance,” he says.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Alberta in 2014, it took Dexter two years to land a position in his field of study. “I spent five years not paying those loans back, so now I’m a little bit behind some of my peers,” he says.

Dexter thinks that when he settles his student debt in the next decade, he’ll be able to think about the future—and perhaps even home ownership. “The stability offered by owning a home would be spectacular,” he says. “Especially the sense of pride of ownership, of building a space,” he says. By the time he pays off his student loans, he estimates he will be in his early forties.

But if millennials like the Virlas and Dexter aren’t eventually able to afford to buy a home, their retirement prospects are discouraging .

Today, Alberta is the province with the youngest population in Canada. It also has the highest rate of home ownership among seniors in Canada, but as the province’s population ages, some have raised concerns about dealing with a larger and less affluent senior population today and in the future.

“I don’t feel at all that this government is doing what it needs to do to support seniors in Alberta,” NDP MLA Lori Sigurdson told the Edmonton Journal in February, highlighting the need to support Alberta’s growing senior population. “A lot of housing is quite old, and we need to make sure that those are properly maintained.”

In Alberta, seniors on average spend nearly half their monthly income on expenses related to housing: rent, taxes, and household operations. Furthermore, seniors living in rental accommodations are more likely to live in inadequate housing due to issues related to affordability and dwelling conditions.

With the Alberta government seemingly planning to offload the provision of affordable housing to private organizations, co-operative housing could be part of the solution to a looming problem and allow millennials to age in place when the time comes—even without a nest egg.

Designed with community in mind, co-operative housing offers an alternative to home ownership that’s affordable, accessible and stable. According to Blair Hamilton, program manager at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, “[co-op housing] looks at a different set of priorities and gives people the freedom to still exercise together some of the responsibilities and decision-making without having the personal wealth that [home ownership] requires.”

To become a co-op member, all residents have to do is purchase a share. “It’s sort of a cross between renting and owning, and so when you leave you get your share back,” says Beth Nielsen, the president of Sundance, a housing co-op in Edmonton. A share in Sundance costs $2,000.

While co-op members don’t have any equity in their homes, they get “sweat” equity, explains Catherine Leviten-Reid, an associate professor of community economic development at Cape Breton University. “You’re actually contributing some of your time to the functioning of the co-op.”

Housing co-ops are democratic organizations that rely on their members for decision-making, as well as for the operation and maintenance of their premises. According to Hamilton, co-ops allow members “to get a level of control that you won’t get in the rental market.”

Sandra Kendrick has lived in Sundance since 1978 and she’s never felt like a renter. “I believe that a big part of that is that every member has the right to participate in the decision-making. So if something was happening that I didn’t agree with, I had a voice.”

Furthermore, the ability of a housing co-op to remain affordable depends on the volunteer work of members who join the committees that help manage and operate the co-op. And often, the value of this “sweat” equity exceeds the financial benefits for members, as collaborative work helps members develop a strong social capital and a sense of ownership, Leviten-Reid says.

Nielsen describes co-op housing as a big family. “Everybody looks out for one another, and you have some of the family members [you] don’t necessarily get along with so well, like most families. But we all try and look out for one another,” she says.

Co-op members look after one another not only by participating in the upkeep of the co-op, but also by providing internal subsidies that allow for a healthy mix of incomes and backgrounds. “I think the biggest reason that I love living here is because I can help somebody who can’t afford to live here,” says Sherry Kozak, a resident of Sunnyhill Housing Co-operative in Calgary. (The average rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Sunnyside, the neighbourhood where Sunnyhill is located, is $2,000; in Sunnyhill the monthly housing charge for a similar unit is $982.)

This model helps house a segment of the population that would struggle to find suitable housing within their price range: households whose earnings are below the median, yet above the provincial low-income threshold.

“Many of our members, even though they’re not in the subsidized units, are still working class, lower-middle-class families without tons of money, and so they need affordable housing,” says Hamilton. “There’s a benefit to making sure that that proportion of the market is served, and [co-ops] are really good at serving that portion of the market,” he says, noting that housing co-ops give people stable housing, improving educational outcomes for children and community engagement—which also allows members to age in place.

“We’ve got members in different co-ops who’ve been there 25, 30 years,” Hamilton says. “They have their friends, they’re used to their neighbours, they’re active in their co-op and sitting on the board sometimes—and they don’t want to move, but age catches up with all of us.”

For this reason, Sundance members worked to develop senior-friendly, accessible units in their co-op. “We wanted to have a place where we could say, ‘Well, if I can’t do the stairs anymore, I’d like to be able to move over to a building with an elevator and lots of room to turn my wheelchair around if I needed it,’” Nielsen recalls.

Having lived in a townhouse in Sundance for 30 years, Kendrick developed health issues that compromised her ability to go up and down the stairs. “I didn’t actually have to leave my community in order to find accommodations that suit me, which was wonderful,” she says. She was able to remain in her community by moving to an accessible unit in the new building as soon as it was completed in 2009.

For Kendrick, it wasn’t just the accessibility features that allowed her to stay—affordability played an important role too. “I would probably be in an apartment in not a great neighbourhood. And probably just a studio instead of a one-bedroom,” she says. “I honestly don’t know how I would have coped if I didn’t have the co-op.”

Sundance is in Riverdale, a central neighbourhood in Edmonton, located in the city’s river valley and adjacent to downtown. Its location allows residents easy access to an assortment of amenities and activities, important factors for aging in place, according to Lantz. But while it can be hard to find a one-bedroom rental in Riverdale for under $1,000, the monthly housing charge for a unit like Kendrick’s at Sundance is $884.

Similarly, in Calgary, when Kozak lost all her income and savings due to health issues, she was able to remain in her home of nearly 30 years, but the financial aspect was only part of the support she received. “I don’t know how I could have managed if I was somewhere else, because all my neighbours here at the co-op were just so incredible about helping me,” she says. Her neighbours helped her with her groceries, brought her food when she couldn’t cook, and drove her to doctor’s appointments. They still do. “Paying someone to look after you is not the same as your neighbours caring about what happens to you,” she says.

The social component of housing co-ops is especially relevant in provinces that, like Alberta, lack tenants associations, Leviten-Reid says. Both Kendrick and Kozak benefit from remaining active in their communities, being surrounded by a diverse mix of incomes, backgrounds, and ages. This diversity keeps Kendrick feeling young and energized, she says.

Moreover, the nature of the community ensures everyone is looked after. “I love the fact that if my washer breaks down, I just call somebody in the co-op and arrange to have it fixed,” Kendrick says, aware that if she were a homeowner, she wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for any repairs.

“When I’m in the co-op I don’t need to worry about those things because the co-op has put aside money to do that kind of stuff,” she says. “For somebody like me … sort of on the lower end of the income scale, the co-op life was so much better than being a homeowner.”

Co-ops have the potential to effectively support the needs of an aging population, Lantz says. This is especially true if they are based on a solidarity model that includes municipalities and senior services in decision-making, as recommended by Leviten-Reid. Building more co-ops would add to the existing range of housing options—the problem is getting in. Both Sundance and Sunnyhill have long waiting lists ranging between 2 and 10 years, especially when it comes to senior-friendly and subsidized units.

“Sundance doesn’t have a lot of turnover, we generally have maybe two or three moves in a year, which is partly why we have such a long waiting list,” says Kendrick, who also chairs the residence committee. “But what it says to me is that people are here for the long term.”

One of the problems with that is, compared to B.C., Quebec, and Ontario, the number of housing co-ops in Alberta is small. Hamilton says this is because home ownership remained relatively affordable in the Prairies, “but that’s changed over time.”

The main challenge to developing new housing co-ops, and to expanding existing ones, is funding. Since the federal program that supported the development of existing co-ops ended in the 1990s, “there wasn’t a lot of investment in affordable housing for quite a while,” Hamilton says. And while the adoption of the National Housing Strategy (the federal government’s program meant to fund the provision of affordable housing across Canada) may help, to reap the benefits provinces and municipalities should be on board. So far they have been slow to recognize housing co-ops as affordable housing providers because of the existing income mix. Co-ops’ target is at 80 percent of the median market, Hamilton says. “We need to keep talking to municipalities that don’t understand [the co-op model] and be our own best spokespeople.”

If more government funding were available to develop new non-ownership co-ops in Alberta, in which shareholders aren’t required to pay a hefty down payment, millennials like the Virlas and Dexter would have fewer reasons to worry about the future. According to Hamilton, “if [millennials] organize in co-ops now, and they build ones that they think about in terms of aging in place—they won’t have to leave when they get to be 55 or 60.”

Illustration by Matthew Daley

My first grown-up job paid $33 an hour, in 1987. It didn’t truly pay $33 an hour, because it was a teaching job, and the rate didn’t include lesson planning. It was also very part-time. But fresh out of university, I thought this was astonishingly generous compensation. I got the job through the (former) Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto because I was an exuberant leftist with impeccable grammar. I have never earned that much since, with the exception of the odd consulting gig.

That very cool job teaching workplace ESL and literacy started me down a path that led to some very interesting places. I was an educated white woman with choices, so I chose jobs that I felt had the greatest impact on the issues and communities I cared about. I had the luxury of being able to uphold my political ideals in the workplace. I got involved in popular education and theatre, grassroots storytelling, museum accessibility, and feminist history, moving laterally with the winds of policy change. But I had an unerring ability to take on positions that would cease to exist after the next federal or provincial election.

Until the turn of the millennium, I got every job I really wanted. Not-for-profit jobs were plentiful back then, when governments of different levels and leanings took their responsibilities to their citizens more seriously. Public money was available to at least plug some of the gaps between the rich and the poor, if not address systemic inequality. But these jobs were never secure, because they always depended on project grants. I was naively shocked by my first layoff. I was the sole employee of a unique little nonprofit that had developed practical and successful training tools for adult basic education. I was travelling around the country delivering workshops for which demand was steadily growing. The work was fully funded through a cost-share agreement between the province and the feds (incredible but true), and after four years, they simply cut it off. It sounds absurd now, but the organization’s board and I hadn’t needed supplemental funds from other sources, so we’d put all our energy into programming rather than fundraising. When the work came to a complete stop, I boxed everything up and sent it to an archive.

I was deeply disappointed, but I was young and rolled with it. Within a few months, I was offered my dream job as executive director of a workers’ arts and heritage centre.

Then Mike Harris and his cronies began the task of obliterating every last shred of humanity from Ontario’s arts, education, health, and social service sectors. I hung on for five years before being laid off a second time. It took dozens of interviews during the summer of 2000 before I landed my next job. I had the misfortune of being laid off twice more before I was 40, at which point I was burned out and, in a curious career non sequitur, took up teaching Pilates.

Soon bored with abdominal curls, I was lured back into a not-for-profit job that was so useful to Canadian women, I thought it would surely last me until retirement. Its mandate was to raise funds on behalf of more than a dozen national feminist organizations doing work ranging from prison reform to apprenticeship training, saving each the time and effort of going after the same pool of donors. Then Stephen Harper took office and reduced Status of Women Canada to rubble, closing regional offices, slashing research and support for women’s equality, and even erasing the word “equality” from its mandate. Hello, layoff number five.

I decided to go into business for myself, reasoning that the precarity couldn’t be any worse. For five years, I sank all of my resources—financial, mental, and emotional—into selling locally, sustainably handmade goods and offering craft workshops. I brought in artists to teach everything from bookbinding and screenprinting to spinning and weaving. It fulfilled my own lifelong passion for hand-making. I was surrounded by beauty and creativity every day. The business was a joy and it made a difference to some of my artists’ bottom line, but left me with more capital losses than I’ll ever be able to claim on my taxes. A lot of people treated my place like a public art gallery, while continuing to shop online or at chain stores. When I had a mediocre holiday season in 2013, I had to concede defeat and close my studio and shop. I came away rich in human assets, but entirely unencumbered by investments or real estate.

My peers warned me that being over 50 would render me unemployable, but I didn’t believe it until 200 resumes garnered me two or three interviews during all of 2014. Nobody wanted an executive director of my age, and nobody believed I’d happily settle for any role beneath that. It didn’t help that the kind of work I’d been doing in the 1980s and 1990s barely existed anymore, social services and the arts having gradually fallen victim to leaner and meaner governments. Few of the organizations I’d been involved with had survived. It felt like the fruits of all my labour had vanished without a trace.

For the past seven years, I’ve done an array of random jobs, from writing mercilessly upbeat schlock for a local paper to selling cheese at farmers’ markets. At one point, I had to go on welfare, which covered less than half of my Toronto rent. The other half, and groceries, came from my credit cards—a situation which inevitably came back to bite me. When I remarked to my Service Ontario rep that the positions I had previously held all required a master’s degree now, she cheerfully suggested I accrue massive debt to go back to university, as if this would make me more employable at 60.

The only position for which I was highly desirable was a nanny. Turns out everybody wants a mature, progressive, lesbian to mind their kids. It started accidentally, when I agreed to look after the children of friends. I was good at it. How would I describe my qualifications for this role? I’m nurturing, gentle, and squishy for cuddling. With age, I’ve become patient and unflappable. Once, I would have said my top skills were leadership and efficiency. Now I can boast about perfect playdough and aesthetically pleasing snow castles.

Childcare is an unhappy combination of exhausting and boring. But toddlers are super weird, so I found it entertaining enough to keep me going until COVID-19 hit. I did pretty well for an old broad, sustaining only one injury when I collided with a bus … of the Fisher-Price variety. Luckily, I was working above board and paying into EI, which I can now collect. But I am actively plotting a post-pandemic career change, because my body is eventually going to limit my schlepping and hoisting of children. I’ve got my first book coming out this fall, and am pinning my hopes on some modest arts council grants, so I can eke out a living as a somewhat aged emerging writer.

During the large swaths of time I have had to let my mind wander during the past year, I have thought about how I was part of the gig economy before it even had a name. I had health benefits for much of my career, which was a lifesaver when I was a single parent, but I never had a pension, so I am facing an austere lifestyle in my dotage. I’m accustomed to impecunity, so I expect the transition will not be too jarring. Fortunately, I’ve got a grown daughter who likes me, so I will never be left out in the cold. I expect I’ll be at the forefront of co-housing innovations with family or single friends, just as I was ahead of the precarity curve.

Many in my circle share my circumstances. A few friends are among what might be the last of the career civil servants, so they’ll retire comfortably. A handful have pensions from other public sector or union jobs. But most are artists of one kind or another. For us, 65 will be just another birthday, retirement a meaningless concept from a recent but bygone era. It’s scary, but at least we’ll be dead before old age security runs dry. A lot of us were temporarily rescued by the federal coronavirus relief benefits; it was a comfort to know for certain where our next 2,000 dollars were coming from.

Gigging uncertainly toward my golden years, it’s hard to resist regret. I always maintained the illusion that I was contributing to something bigger, even if it felt like I was pushing a boulder uphill much of the time.

In retrospect, I know I had an impact on some individual people, if not the systems that held them back. I was born with a great deal of race and class privilege, and my goal was to spread it around, not to squander it. I could have had one of those jobs-for-life before they went extinct, if I had just been less political and impatient, and more risk-averse and compromising. On the other hand, I recently reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. She said, “You never sold out!” That and a toonie will get me a cup of coffee, but it means a lot, just the same.

Photo courtesy of Rose Cullis

Picture me sitting on a couch in chartreuse satin pajamas with turquoise embroidery stitched on the seams. The satin feels cool and slippery when I shift to move my computer onto my crossed legs to begin writing. I’ve pinned a big pink button over the place on the body we associate with the heart. The pin says, “Don’t cramp my style.”

I’m an older woman and I’m being regulated to perform it in a way that satisfies social norms about fading away. If I behave too boldly in my choice of colours—or in my willingness to expose my aging body to view—I invite comments that remind me of how outrageous that is. The comments aren’t always negative, but ultimately they serve to make me self-conscious about my appearance and pressured to be more careful about the choices I make. People talk about feeling invisible when they get older; I feel like there’s lots of pressure to pull that disappearing act off.

I’ve been looking away and through too. But older people are suddenly more visible to me and I love it. I’m seeing aging faces in a full blown light: as beautiful and ephemeral as dandelions gone to seed inviting wishes.

When I was a teenager in the mid-seventies I favoured big overalls, high-top running shoes, and short faux fur jackets. One day, I went to the mall with my mother and we found a sleeveless mini dress she loved. In my memory, the dress invoked her crayon strip of blue sky personality with a great yellow strobing sun in the centre. We came home and she put it on to show my father. He looked disapproving when she spun in front of him. “It’s not matronly enough,” he said.

Matronly. I’d never heard it used this way before—as a fashion choice someone should aim for. It conjured up images of a grim Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But I knew what was going on. My mother, who would have been in her mid-forties at the time, was being checked for her aspirations. She was being told she needed to know her place as an older (married) woman and that she was to dress in an understated, unsexed regulation uniform that indicated modesty and a willingness to fade out.

I’m 62 years old now and the image of “the matron” is a spectre that haunts me. Mostly, I have a sense that I still just don’t get it. At my friend’s cottage in the country, I climb naked on an outcrop of rock that’s dressed in spongy sea-green moss and I feel variegated. Decorated. Complicated. Back at home in the city, I look down at exposed forearms and feel disconcerted to see ink blots of age spots.

What do people see? Who have I become?

Many people seem eager to enlighten me. A few years ago I was in New York on a hot sunny June day, a little lost and wandering the streets looking for an entrance to the subway. I’d been to an exhibit at the Guggenheim that had thrilled me.
I was a little achy and tired, wearing a short creamsicle-coloured sleeveless dress with faux snakeskin wedges. I was slathered in a greasy coconut-scented sunscreen that felt a little sticky in the heat. I was excited and stimulated by the show and feeling that tug of a sense that anything is possible. I felt young.

Then I heard a man call out, “Wow! Even Granny has tattoos!”

At first, I didn’t know he was talking about me. Then I realized that of course he was. My arms and legs are bedecked in tattoos, I was wearing a dress that made them visible, and as he had reminded me: I’m older. I turned around and laughed and said, “Damn right!” Then I asked him for directions to the nearest train station.

He was sheepish. Apologetic. He called me ma’am and pointed the way. I immediately knew what had happened. He’d seen me coming from a distance, read my tattoos and my heels as a kind of sexual availability, and then realized as I got closer that he’d made a mistake. That embarrassed him. He’d been attracted to an old granny!

Back in Toronto, I decided to dye my hair blue. When people started smiling at me on the street, I assumed it was a good thing. They were friendly smiles, grins, thumbs up. One man stopped me on the street to say, “You look great!”

“Thanks,” I said. I’m embarrassed to admit I was flattered.

“Let me explain,” he went on, and I felt a sinking feeling. “Most women your age wouldn’t have the courage to dye
their hair like you have. It’s great that you feel free. Keep
feeling free!”

I felt less free and I knew that part of what inspired his explanation was his desire to distance himself from the possibility of being perceived as attracted to an older woman. I also felt keenly patronized—a hazard for older people, for whom the designation “cute” has a whole new and annoying meaning.

Women regulate me too, but it’s subtler. A couple of years ago a woman who looked thirty-something rushed up to me after a performance in a queer space that I thought had gone well. “I want to be just like you in 20 years!” she cried. I felt compelled to take it as a compliment. I looked down at the shimmering silver oxfords I was wearing that night and knocked my heels together. When they catch the light, they’re rainbow coloured. Then I looked back up and said, “Thank you.” I knew the younger woman meant well, but I wanted, somehow, to just be who I am and not some example of aging to strive for.

Recently a friend of mine wrote to counsel me about how I should perform my age. She’s in her early forties now and said in her email that she knows that she’ll eventually have to cope with (more) wrinkles and other changes, and that the thought scares her. She wants me—needs me, she says—to be an example of someone who embraces my age with attitude. Ideally, I can be the badass she’s looking for. I don’t know how I feel about her request. Pep talks from younger folks are awkward. They’re a little humiliating.

If life is a casting off—if aging is a letting go—can’t that be a good thing? My East Coast mother let my sisters and I run around with our shirts off on hot days. She kept our hair cropped short, so it was easier to deal with. Even though I knew I was supposed to be a girl (and I admired, as it happened, dresses with smocks and long hair held back with a wide headband), my other genders sang in my flat exposed chest and there was a wildness there. Once I hit adolescence, which was 11 years old for me, my pointed nipples under clinging knit sweaters and see-through cotton blouses (ideally with billowing pirate sleeves) invited stares and comments from men on the street. “Go upstairs and put a bra on!” my mother would order me.

I was aware of being a provocation, which was exciting and powerful, but it came at the cost of self-consciousness. When I was a child my nakedness was a source of delight, and I felt like I owned it. Maybe there’s a way to win this sensibility back now that I’m older—a space opening up to redefine what sexy means—and take it away from the idea of it being contingent on someone else’s interest. I’m conscious of coming to this project late, of having aged into it. Many other people have already been working on it.

Despite my reaction to being called on to be an inspiration, I know mentors are important. A friend of mine, who’s in her mid-fifties, was travelling in Berlin years ago and she tells me she was intensely affected by an older woman she watched dismounting a motorcycle. The woman took off her helmet and ran her hands over her brush-cut hair. She was so effortlessly herself that my friend immediately crushed on her. The image of the woman sustains her and reminds her that older women can be beautiful because they’re who they are, not despite
their age.

Tonight I’m going to a private party. I’m wearing tight black jeans with a t-shirt and blue Doc Martens. My big belt buckle is glittering with blood red crystals. Time to put on Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope” and take a spin with it. Self-possession is a bold and beautiful thing. I want to walk the streets loving all the art I see and take the stage in power. Don’t tangle with me. Don’t cramp my style.

Despite the fact that most of us find comfort in the warm, overly buttery cooking of our grandmothers, old women in horror are the creepiest. You know granny means trouble in a horror movie when she walks into a room dressed in that classic granny cardigan, compassionately offering tasty snacks for lost, cold, and hungry travellers.

I recently watched two really excellent horror films, Mercy (2014) and The Talking of Deborah Logan (2014), which both have terrifying old women as the antagonists. Both movies sufficiently scared and intrigued me. It got me thinking: what is our perception of the elderly, and what makes them so frightening in horror?

It’s no surprise that our society is uncomfortable with aging. We have an obsession with youth and it’s painfully obvious in the beauty aisle of any store. Rows and rows of creams are stacked next to each other promising youthful rejuvenation, improved skin elasticity, and the destruction of wrinkles. Crows feet are our enemies. Laugh lines scare us. The battle against aging is a multi-million dollar industry. We are a society in denial of the reality of growing old.

Old-age-related illnesses like Alzheimer’s and dementia feel like inevitable epidemics waiting to ensnare us as we grow old. It can devastate entire families to watch our loved ones become someone who they’re not. It’s the bogeyman of aging. In both Mercy and The Talking of Deborah Logan, the old women have age-related illnesses. Deborah has Alzheimer’s, and Mercy’s sickness is unspecified but leaves her as a shell of her former self. In each film these illnesses make the women vulnerable to evil influences, suggesting that a demon is really to blame.

It poses a strange question. Are old-age related diseases the demons of aging? Are we afraid of old people because we are afraid of what we might become when we age?

On one hand, I love the creepy old lady movies. They always get to me. There’s a scary possessed old woman in The Exorcist III and I screamed during a close-up scene of her face as she began lunging with a kitchen knife.

But on the other hand, while diseases and deteriorating minds is a frightening thought, I’m comfortable with the idea of aging. I’m actually stoked to be a gentle kind grandma, rocking on the front porch with my ice tea and pet goats (don’t ask). But our deep discomfort with old age and the unpredictability of mental illness in seniors is clear from the scary old lady trope of mainstream horror.

From the films mentioned above to others such as Drag Me To Hell (2009)  and Dead Silence (2007) to the notoriously evil old couple in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), there’s no doubt we all have a secret fear of grannies gone bad. In horror movies grandma’s not there to rock you to sleep and give you extra cash when your parents aren’t looking; she’s the Nana of your nightmares. Perhaps we also get a thrill out of the strange juxtaposition of an old lady wearing knitted sweaters and bedroom slippers suddenly becoming a hell-bent minion of Satan. It reminds me of that diner scene in Legion where the granny with the kind smile and pink cardigan suddenly leaps onto the ceiling with jaw outstretched and a thirst for blood in her eyes.

Next week I examine the opposite of the frightening old women: the creepy little kid, e one of the greatest tropes of horror.

Can $20,000 payments to recent grads prevent Saskatchewan from becoming the "Land of the Living Old"?

It hasn’t been easy being Alberta’s neighbour these last few years. While Canada’s economic wunderkind enjoyed double-digit growth, next-door Saskatchewan saw the near-disappearance of the family farm and watched 35,000 residents in five years flee to other provinces. So when the Conservative Saskatchewan Party swept to power in 2007, promising a $20,000 tuition rebate for recent graduates who settle in the province, it looked like the final desperate act for a province one blogger dubbed “land of the living old.”

The generous rebate “signals to post-secondary graduates from across the country and beyond that Saskatchewan is the best place to establish their careers and pursue their goals,” Saskatchewan’s advanced education, employment and labour minister, John Norris, says. The program originally started up in January 2008, promising rebates to just grads of Saskatchewan universities, but it has since been extended to out-of-province graduates of post-secondary institutions, thanks to the province’s thriving economy. The rebates do have a few catches. The money is paid out gradually over seven years and graduates of shorter, cheaper technical programs actually receive around $3,000 to $6,000. But the biggest catch of all is that the full bonus is available only if students graduated in 2010 or later. Graduates from 2006 are only eligible for a mere $5,000.

For many, though, Saskatchewan offers something better than a generous rebate: jobs. As most provinces panic over rising unemployment, Saskatchewan jobsite saskjobs.ca shows more than 6,000 unfilled jobs. For the approximately 460 out-of-province arrivals from the graduating class of 2008, who received their first cheques this spring just as Canada’s youth unemployment rate hit an 11-year high, Saskatchewan may be just the perfect cure for the recession.

The province has yet to decide how long it will continue with the program and whether the bonus will keep people in the province, especially if Saskatchewan’s economy begins to suffer, is also an open question. But for now it looks like Saskatchewan—which lured many original residents with a bargain of 160 acres for $10—is once again the land where opportunity is as wide open as the prairie. That should at least make for a better slogan.