Yesterday I read an editorial titled “Seniors have so much to offer. Let’s listen, learn”. This reminded me of a program that I ran at Island View when I was there. I had partnered with the grade 10 history teacher and he would bring his students over to interview our residents.

Each time they came to visit the room would be filled with excitement. The students would sit and ask questions then listen with such interest as the residents would give them a firsthand account of what it was like to live through what they had just read about. Each time it would be a different period in Canadian history.

Len grew up in Saskatchewan and the students loved his stories about growing up out west and what it was like during the depression. Orville would teach them the ADHS cheer in Latin. There were also a few residents who were able to talk about growing up in Europe during World War II.

One student stands out in my memory. The teacher had called and said he had 1 student who was going through a hard time and she might be overwhelmed when they arrived. I said leave it with me. I then talked to a resident who had been a school principal. When the students arrived the resident discreetly took the student to a quiet corner and they sat the entire time and just talked. Each time the students came back they were able to sit together, and she had a friend she could talk to.

When I was growing up my Great Grandmother, Great Aunt and Great Great Aunt lived in the apartment above my house. I spent many hours with them drinking tea and learning how to knit, crochet, sew and listening to stories. I also learned how to bake and quilt from my Grandmother on the many visits to the farm. And I have a very vivid memory sitting in my other Grandmother’s kitchen while she taught me about fractions.  

My children were lucky to have their grandparents close while they were growing up and if you ask them, I’m sure they can tell you many stories about the things they learned from them.

I have been so blessed to work with seniors the past 20 years and not a day goes by without me learning something new from them. It’s time for us as a country to learn from our seniors and fix the system that we put them in. It is going to be expensive to revamp the system that is so badly broken, but the time has come to make our seniors a priority. The pandemic has taken a problem that everyone who works in long term care has known about for a long time and made the public aware of it. Now it is time to do something about it.