This text is part of the special booklet Living fully
How do we want to age? How can we create territories that will meet our needs? With the Habitats movement, the organization Un et un font mille wishes to find answers and solutions to these questions to generate changes in society.
In a CHSLD, a 75-year-old woman looks out the window. Like so many others, she may feel alone, excluded, forgotten. ” How did we get here ? asks the actor François Grisé at the end of the play All inclusive, inspired by his stay of several weeks in a CHSLD. How did we come to live our old age in this way in Quebec? »
If the pandemic has underlined in broad strokes the crisis in the health care system and in CHSLDs, political changes to rectify the situation are not there, specifies the actor. And another challenge is increasingly felt: the rapid aging of the Quebec population.
“It’s the disaster that is coming, believes Mr. Grisé. If we wait for the municipalities and the government to do something, we will wait a long time. What motivates me is the decision to overturn the pyramid, to say: “Let’s get together, use our intelligence, our experiences, look at what exists and what doesn’t, or else let’s invent- the”. »
From this desire was born the Habitats movement, which provokes reflection and action in the face of the challenges and realities of ageing. The project was launched during a first march for seniors in 2021, an initiative that will be repeated in 2022. “We want there to be thousands of people on the streets who say ‘we don’t want to feel excluded , we want more transportation,” says Mr. Grisé, who points out that mobility is one of the main issues raised by seniors.
With the movement began a process of consultation and creation of projects aimed at responding to specific problems. Multigenerational groups — interforums — have been formed in different regions of Quebec and meet regularly. Each group first determines a theme on which it wishes to work, such as citizen participation or isolation, before studying the initiatives already carried out in this area.
Let’s get together, use our intelligence, our experiences, look at what exists and what does not exist, or let’s invent it
The interforums will then work to develop a project prototype, the implementation of which could be carried out by people from the initiative. So far, five groups have been formed in the regions of Montreal, Lanaudière, Capitale-Nationale, Montérégie and Centre-du-Québec. They will meet at a national forum to be held next May to discuss and learn about what has already been done in the field. Other groups will be gradually created in the other administrative regions of the province over the three years of the project.
“What we imagine is that the prototype created in Montreal or Quebec begins to reproduce itself everywhere else, hopes Mr. Grisé. We are at the start of something. We think that in two years, there will be young shoots, solutions that will come out. We do not yet know what will emerge! »
The power of action
“The elderly do not feel included in general, they feel alone, they want to stay at home as long as possible, to have access to sidewalks, to parks, observes François Grisé. We realized that people knew what they wanted. But we don’t ask them. »
But how do you generate change? After many performances of the play All inclusive, François Grisé felt that viewers felt helpless in the face of issues surrounding old age. “The people I spoke to after the play told me: ‘we don’t talk about that so much, we don’t know the other options, we’re a little lost,’ observes the actor. There are many links between climate change and old age: it’s so big it feels like there’s nothing we can do about it. »
“The power of action is very empowering, continues Mr. Grisé with passion. Instead of trying to fix all the problems of aging, we can create something that gives us a grip. What I learned [au fil des années], is the strength of the whole. This is also how he concludes his play All inclusive “Being together, acting together, is the only thing that really changes anything. »
To get involved
People interested in participating in an interforum are invited to contact the Habitats team. Citizens of all ages are also invited to attend the online citizen consultations to discuss the realities of aging, the National Forum, which will be held on May 16 and 17, as well as the march for the International Day of Older Adults, on May 1er next October.