B.C. Article

Seniors in our cities -- B.C. leads the nation
We're home to some of the most 'elderly' in Canada
Chad Skelton and Darah Hansen, Vancouver SunPublished: Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Qualicum Beach has more elderly people than any other small town in Canada, - 41 per cent of the population is 65 and over - and Sophia Thornley couldn't be happier about it.
"You know that television show Cheers, where they say it's a place where everyone knows your name?" Thornley said Tuesday.
"Well, we all joke that this is a place where everyone forgets your name," said the 81-year-old, who moved to Qualicum Beach from Victoria in 1996.
Thornley said the small town offers everything she ever thought she wanted and more, including a new husband, Donald Nix, who she just married in December.
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"We're just lucky that we found each other. We laugh a lot together and it's just been very nice," Thornley said. Statistics Canada released figures Tuesday showing B.C. is home to some of the most elderly communities in Canada, including several where more than a third of the population is aged 65 and over.
New data from the 2006 national census reveals B.C. is only the fifth-most elderly province in Canada, with 14.6 per cent of our population 65 and older, just slightly ahead of the national average of 13.7 per cent.
But Canada's most elderly big city, mid-sized city and small town are all located in B.C. Of Canada's 33 major cities, Kelowna has the highest proportion of seniors, with nearly one in five of its residents (19 per cent) 65 and over.
Among Canada's mid-sized cities, Parksville is the oldest - with more than a third of its population (33.8 per cent) 65 and over and one-tenth of its residents over 80.
And tiny Qualicum Beach (population 8,500) is the oldest small town in the country, with a whopping 41 per cent of its residents 65 and over.
Indeed, according to Statistics Canada, fully half of the 10 oldest communities in Canada with more than 5,000 residents are in B.C. - including Qualicum Beach and Parksville, but also Sidney, White Rock and Trail.
Don McRae, director of BC Stats, said the figures reflect the fact that many places in B.C. have become prime retirement destinations for seniors from across Canada.
McRae said the province's mild climate is probably the main attraction for winter-weary seniors. But he also said once a community like Parksville or Kelowna gets a critical mass of seniors - and services - it becomes an even more attractive destination.
In Qualicum Beach, Thornley is an active member of the Qualicum Beach Seniors' Activity Centre, which boasts about 700 members 55 and older, including 27 members over the age of 90, and she said there's not much risk of Qualicum's seniors getting lonely or bored.
"We love coming to the seniors' centre," she said. "It has an ambience of being friendly. You come in for coffee and a real good laugh."
She also enjoys Qualicum's wide network of walking trails, lively amateur theatre scene and art gallery. "There are all sorts of things for seniors here," she said. Kelowna politicians are also well aware of its growing seniors population. In 2006, the city commissioned a strategy to specifically address seniors' needs in the community, including building more walking trails and community gardens, as well as increasing parking space for motorized scooters.
While the vast majority of B.C.'s most elderly towns got that way because seniors moved in, McRae noted that in some cases it's because everyone else moved away.
In the mining town of Trail, for example, the number of children has dropped 13 per cent over the past five years. McRae said, unlike destination resorts like Qualicum, Trail is getting older because young people are moving away to find work - while those who lived there all their lives have stayed put.
While Tuesday's census figures show B.C. dominates the list of most elderly cities and towns, a few of the province's municipalities also made the list of the nation's youngest.
Abbotsford is the third-youngest big city in the country with fully one-fifth of its residents under the age of 15. And Fort St. John is the nation's ninth-youngest mid-sized city, with 21.7 per cent of its residents under 15. According to Statistics Canada, B.C. has historically had an older population than the rest of the country, a product of our higher life expectancy and lower birth rate.
And that trend is continuing. Between 2001 and 2006, according to the census, the number of B.C. residents 65 and over jumped 12.5 per cent while the number of children under 15 dropped 3.7 per cent.
B.C.'s median age - the point at which exactly half of the population is older and half is younger - also surpassed 40 for the first time in 2006 and now stands at 40.8.
Not surprisingly, the 2006 census indicates that Canada's population continues to age as the baby boomers near retirement.
Indeed, the number of Canadians aged 55 to 64 jumped a staggering 28.1 per cent since the 2001 census. Many of B.C.'s oldest communities, like Kelowna and Victoria, have been retirement destinations for decades. But one of the interesting things about Tuesday's figures is that several communities in B.C. have seen dramatic changes in their population just since the 2001 census.
For example, while Whistler is the most youthful city in all of B.C., with just 3.8 per cent of residents 65 and over, it also has the fastest growing retirement community in the entire province.
In just the past five years alone, according to the census, the number of retirement-age people in Whistler has jumped a whopping 62 per cent - to 350.
And while Victoria is one of the most elderly cities in Canada, it is also one of only six municipalities in B.C. that actually saw its senior population decline in 2006 - albeit by just 0.9 per cent.
© Vancouver Sun 2007