This text is part of the special booklet Living fully
In 2050, 14.3 million Canadians will be over the age of 60, compared to about 8 million today. However, to live this aging harmoniously, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the development of “age-friendly cities”. What is that ?
“The municipality can have a direct impact on the lives of seniors,” says Constance Lafontaine, deputy director of the ACT (Aging + Communications + Technologies) research laboratory at Concordia University. Cities need to set goals and strategies for adopting “age-friendly” policies, which will need to evolve over the next few years, she says.
Bridging the digital divide
The ACT lab, which works in partnership with community groups, is interested in aging in a digital society. “We were able to see the difficulties encountered by seniors during the pandemic, because they did not have access to digital technology,” says Constance Lafontaine. People living below the poverty line are particularly affected. “Our research shows that some seniors want to learn digital, but it costs too much. Other people neglect their food or their medicine to be able to pay for their Internet plan or their cell phone”, says the assistant director.
Constance Lafontaine notes that society depends more and more on digital technology, but that few solutions are offered to people who do not have access to it. “We could, for example, add wifi networks in HLMs for seniors,” she suggests, stressing that measures reducing the digital divide would also benefit other people in a difficult economic situation.
Participate in society
It is not only in the digital domain that the ACT laboratory deplores the lack of strategies implemented by municipalities to include seniors. “In Montreal, there is a flagrant lack of effort. We saw it, for example, when the City refused to allow people aged 70 and over to vote by mail,” laments the deputy director.
This inclusion is at the heart of the Urban Witnesses project, set up by Concordia University’s Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling in collaboration with the Atwater Library. For a year, a small group of seniors shared their memories of Montreal with the public, in the form of sound and visual elements and two audio-guided walks. “It was wonderful to see the elders taking the public space of the city and framing it with their memory! says Cynthia Hammond, professor of art history at Concordia who co-created this project.
Mme Hammond announces a new deployment of this artistic and inclusive approach in a larger version. “With The Extraordinary City, we will give a voice to diverse seniors. We conduct interviews with many immigrants or people on the margins of society, such as elders who are members of the Asian or indigenous community or sex workers, who have a spatial and political knowledge of the fantastic city”, rejoices- she. This project, which will take place over three years, will culminate in an exhibition at the Center des Mémoires Montréalaises in the spring of 2024.
Change of look
The inadequacy of public policies was glaringly revealed during the pandemic with the drama of the CHSLDs, or during heat waves (in 2018, the majority of the 66 people who died in Montreal were seniors), recalls Constance Lafontaine. “Seniors stopped us during the heat wave because their landlords did not allow them to install air conditioning in their homes,” says the assistant director of ACT, pointing out that 51% of older Montrealers are tenants. In the age of pandemics and global warming, it’s time to rethink the impact of our decisions.
Elders have a lot to teach us, and one of them is that getting old is not a disaster. “We need to think about aging in terms of wealth,” said Constance Lafontaine, who was shocked by the campaign slogan “ Never grow up launched in 2018 by Tourisme Montréal. “Why can’t we associate fun and pleasure with an older population? she wonders. Cynthia Hammond agrees. For the professor, it is important that our society perceives aging “not as a gray tsunami, but as a silver wave”.