Our Stories

It’s obvious from the way Donna places her hands on the keyboard that she’s typed before, in her working life. Donna is a resident at Cedarvale Lodge Retirement and Care Community in Keswick Ontario, and is learning how to send an email to her granddaughter. She inserts “send me some photos!” in the subject line as Kaylin, Donna’s student mentor, sits in close to guide her.
 
Cedarvale Lodge has partnered with Keswick High School to launch the innovative Cyber-Seniors program in their first home. Student mentors from the school’s leadership program introduce residents to online communication tools such as email, Google, Facebook, Skype and YouTube.
 
The 80-year age gap between Bill and his mentor doesn’t bother him at all. He used to be able to touch-type in the army, but feels more competent on the iPad because there is less typing involved.
 
Bettie is looking at an article about Errol Flynn on the Vanity Fair website. Her student mentor Holly shows Bettie how to use the scroll wheel on the mouse, which she gets easily, along with the double-click that almost every other resident is having trouble with. “I don’t have a problem reading off the screen,” she says proudly. “My eyesight is very good.”
 
There are also additional benefits for seniors in accessing memories. When one of the residents found his childhood home on Google Maps, he found a nearby dance hall he used to go to, and spent the rest of the period talking about this time in his life.
 
Following the completion of the program, a graduation ceremony was held at Cedarvale Lodge. Residents wore the traditional academic cap and gown, and were accompanied by their mentors into a decorated graduation hall full of family and friends.

The Toronto-based charity Loving Rose Mission, run by husband-and-wife team David and Susan Ruskin, collect donated equipment from our homes and ship it to rural community hospitals in the Philippines to be reused.

Several of our homes have been donating beds, mattresses, wheelchairs, walkers, clothing and blankets for several years now. This has allowed us to recycle and clear storage space, while also helping those in need on the other side of the world.

David started the registered charity in 2007, and says health problems in rural areas of the Philippines can often be terminal due to limited health resources. The main requirement in Philippine nursing homes is for beds. Once the donated beds from Sienna Senior Living have been refurbished, the hospitals often say they are “just like new”.

At the moment, only donations from long-term care homes and hospitals in Ontario are collected due to limited resources. The Mission uses a temporary storage facility in Toronto, and ships a 40 ft. container to the capital city Manila about four or five times per year. The containers are unloaded, inspected by customs, and taken to a warehouse for refurbishment before being transported to the city of Bacolod, where David and Susan live.

When this question was posed to residents at Island Park Retirement Residence recently, one resident, Jean Taylor, ended up fulfilling a long-awaited dream to go on a horse and cutter ride again.

The last time Jean did this was in 1942 when she was 12 years old and living in Nova Scotia. She loved horses, and took the ride with her childhood friends. Now 85, she relies on her motorized chair to get around, but is determined not to let her immobility get in her way.

You could be forgiven for confusing a cutter with a sleigh, when in fact cutters were created solely for leisure, and designed to be snug and comfortable, for one or two people only. Sleighs, on the other hand, were built to accommodate a larger group—sometimes a whole family.

At first, the process of bringing Jean’s dream to life was easier said than done. This was mainly due to weather conditions and the practical matter of having both a horse and a cutter available at the same time. However, a local farmer was able to provide both, and with a welcome temperature increase, a dream came true!

A framed black and white photograph in Elizabeth Kimoff’s room at Harmony Hills Care Community in Toronto shows three young boys standing together. One of the boys is Elizabeth’s son, 86-year-old Dr. Richard Kimoff, who was visiting his mother on her 110th birthday.
 
Elizabeth looked twenty years younger than her 110 years. Her hair was combed back neatly, and she had a beautiful, calm disposition and rosy cheeks.
 
She was born in 1904, and moved to Canada in 1923 with her brother from their village in rural Macedonia. She was eighteen at the time.
 
After settling in Toronto and becoming part of the growing Macedonian community, her first job was working as a finisher of men’s suits. These were difficult times, with many cultural adjustments and a steep language barrier.
 
She married in 1926, and lived in a shared house with her husband. The couple moved to an apartment shortly afterwards, and Richard was born.
 
When asked what she remembers about her childhood, she replied with a smile: “Picking cherries. They had lots of cherry trees in the village.” Years later she maintained a few peach trees she had planted from seed in a small plot in Toronto.
 
Elizabeth continues to be very disciplined, especially with her diet and her devotion to Christian faith. She never watches television, but does enjoy listening to hymns, and learned English by consistently consulting a dictionary. Richard adds that she often rode the subway to the end of the line for fun, and enjoys the odd treat of chocolate with hazelnuts, or navel oranges.
 
Elizabeth Kimoff is one of the oldest living supercentenarians (centenarians over 110 years old) in Canada. The world’s oldest documented person is Gertrude Weaver in the United States, who is 116 years old.