What it’s really like to grow old
By Brian Bethune - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - 0 Comments
Millions of boomers will suffer from cognitive loss and dementia. Maybe they already do.
Photo by Brent Foster
Old age is not for sissies, Bette Davis memorably proclaimed. But we’re working on it, and just in the nick of time. The baby boomers, the Western world’s social arbiters ever since their birth spawned a frenzy of school building, are passing another milestone in their march toward a gerontocracy the likes of which the world has never seen. The first of them turned 65 this year, and in Canada they will keep doing so at the rate of 1,000 a day for another 18 years, until the number of seniors is twice that of today. And what boomers need, boomers tend to get, from financial entitlements to social science and psychological theories, and these days the concept of positive aging is flourishing.
For those who will admit to aging at all, that is. More than half of the respondents aged 65 to 74 described themselves as middle-aged or young, in an American survey. Media reports are full of people whose children have had children—grandparents they were called, back before the flood—who insist on being called anything but. (The New Grandparents Name Book has suggestions: Bubbles, GoGo, Napa, Pebbles.) The burgeoning Zoomer media empire, which admittedly includes the middle-aged as well as the elderly in its target audience, remade CARP magazine into Zoomer, adding fashion, beauty, food and wine and relationship articles to the health and finance pieces that dominated the magazine when it was published by the Canadian Association of Retired Persons.
Despite the strong streak of denial in all this—Bubbles?—there is clearly an aura of positivity around contemporary aging, even in an era of mangled private savings and wobbly public finances. Both those who will have to live on retirement income (or have postponed retirement for financial reasons) and those who are going to pay for a significant portion of it through their taxes—a fusion recipe for intergenerational conflict—have good reason for a negative outlook. But positive aging is a concept divorced from economics. Rather, it is associated with great strides in physical health that are allowing us to live longer, as well as the resources being poured into the battle against what Toronto’s Baycrest geriatric-care centre calls the coming “sharp increase in the rate of dementia,” and the efforts of some to tease out the hidden upside in age-related cognitive decline.
Researchers like Stanford University psychologist Laura Carstensen cite the “positivity effect” in old age—the way elderly adults invest more of their diminishing cognitive resources in emotionally meaningful activities. They do this, according to Carstensen’s theory of “socio-emotional selectivity,” from rational, even wise, motives, to derive the most emotional satisfaction possible from their remaining time. The “paradox of aging,” she writes, means that millions of people “suffer significant [cognitive and physical] loss with age but experience life more positively.”
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Christmas, through a comedian's dark lens
By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments
Plus: Walter Mosley’s latest, a biography of the Atlantic Ocean, the father of modern taxidermy, what Boomers can expect from the rest of life, and the late night TV wars
Stand-up comic Lewis Black sneaks something truly shocking into his rant on Christmas—honesty about his own loneliness | Librado Romero/The New York Times
I’M DREAMING OF A BLACK CHRISTMAS
Lewis BlackFor Black, a stand-up comedian who’s carved out a healthy chunk of fame with his angry rants, Christmas might seem an odd choice of topic for his third book of humour. Odder still for a Jewish comic who’s not overly sentimental about the holiday season: “we Jews [at Christmastime] . . . are like the spectators who stand outside the fence and watch those idiots who have chosen to run with the bulls.”
Not to worry, though; Black offers a thorough explanation of how the book came to be (mainly due to needling by his editor, whom he calls “a crack dealer for my self-esteem”). He also includes a cautionary note for those to whom Christmas is sacred: Black Christmas will offer little in the way of holiday cheer and is unlikely to make them “s–t fruitcakes and gingerbread men.” His book, he warns, is “for the rest of us.”
Then he gets down to work, doing what Lewis Black fans expect. He rails against such injustices as kids at seaside resorts (“Why is he screaming? Is the perfection that surrounds him not enough?”), the earthquake in Haiti (“a hideous cosmic joke”), and the tree erected every holiday season in Manhattan (“the hooker at Rockefeller Center”). The funniest material in the book—an account of a USO Holiday Tour in the Middle East with Robin Williams, Lance Armstrong and Kid Rock—is unfortunately tacked on in an appendix.
But among all the wisecracking, Black sneaks in something truly shocking: honesty. As he takes us through how he’s spent his last 10 Christmases—writing cheques to charity and consuming copious food and drink at the homes of two of his closest friends—he opens up about a topic most comics won’t touch with a 10-foot candy cane: loneliness. Black, 62, with a disastrous marriage far behind him (there was DNA testing involved, which revealed that he had been cuckolded), admits that being alone at Christmas “pounds relentlessly on my psyche.” But he’s done the baby math generally reserved for women of a certain age, and knows a family isn’t likely in the cards. By book’s end, he makes a sort of peace with his life, and has a renewed appreciation for his friends. Peace and gratitude. Sounds like a bit of the Christmas spirit.
- Jen Cutts -
What the boomers are leaving their children
By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 184 Comments
Fewer jobs. Lower pay. Higher taxes.
Now the Screwed Generation is starting to push back.
Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images; Andy Clark/Reuters
This January, the first baby boomers turn 65. The huge post-Second World War generation—which numbers 76 million in the United States, makes up almost a third of Canada’s population, and according to one estimate, controls 80 per cent of Britain’s wealth—will continue to enter their dotage at the rate of tens of thousands per day for the next 20 years. By 2050, there will be 30 million Americans aged 75 to 85, three in 10 Europeans will be 65-plus, and more than 40 per cent of Japan’s population will be elderly. In Canada, the ratio of workers to retirees—currently five to one—will have been halved by 2036. And despite the odd dissenter, the generation that still oddly finds Paul McCartney relevant has made clear its intention to take everything it feels it has coming. It will be up to all who trail in their wake to pay for their privilege.
Common sense, not to mention decency, wouldn’t call that just. But an outsized, over-entitled, and self-obsessed demographic is awfully hard for politicians to ignore. Take Britain’s example. In last spring’s general election, the most effective ad run by David Cameron’s Conservatives was also one of the simplest: a close-up of a newborn baby, wriggling in a bassinet as a music box tinkled in the background. “Born four weeks ago, eight pounds, three ounces. With his dad’s nose, mum’s eyes, and Gordon Brown’s debt,” intoned a female voice. “Thanks to Labour’s debt crisis, every child in Britain is born owing £17,000. They deserve better.” The point was impossible to miss: the time had come to stop mortgaging the country’s future.
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When life goes U-shaped
By Kate Lunau - Monday, October 11, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments
Around the world, happiness dips in mid-life. But how Canadian boomers experience it may be very different.
Daniel Rousselot/Corbis
Everybody knows the stereotype: a person hits age 40 and trades in the minivan for a red convertible. Maybe they quit a high-paying job, leave a long-term spouse for a younger partner or obtain an unusual piercing. They’re the classic signs of a mid-life crisis, and the punchline for countless jokes.
But jokes and stereotypes aside, there’s some truth to the notion that our middle years can be tough ones: studies have found that happiness levels dip down at mid-life, and it seems to be affecting baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1965) more than previous generations. In Canada and the U.S., the boomer experience can be starkly different: one survey found that, while middle-aged Canadians felt relatively in control of their lives, Americans were close to panic. There, boomers have contributed to a startling rise in the suicide rate. Still, a number of studies show that, after age 50, happiness levels begin to climb, a period many boomers are now entering. In the third and final instalment of a series examining the well-being of baby boomers, Maclean’s takes a look at the “mid-life crisis,” and how baby boomers—who make up nearly one-third of our population—may well redefine it.
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Boomeritis
By Cathy Gulli - Monday, April 12, 2010 at 12:22 PM - 2 Comments
Sports injuries plague a generation that just won’t stop
Getty Images
The day that Gordon Ritchie turned 57, he showed up at his orthopaedic surgeon’s office in Calgary for arthroscopic surgery on his right knee, which had been banged up after years of playing sports. It was an unusual way to celebrate his birthday, but for Ritchie, an investment banker and avid cyclist, golfer and skier, the surgery was the best way to usher in a new year of pushing his body to the limit. “It was,” he says, “a wonderful birthday present.” Within weeks, Ritchie began planning his next helicopter-skiing trip.
Ritchie represents a growing phenomenon among baby boomers, those individuals born between 1946 and 1964. For the first time, middle-aged people and those approaching retirement are more fit and physically active than ever—and they’re putting in massive amounts of money, time and effort to keep it that way for as long as possible. “I see quite a few soccer players, skiers, runners, tennis players, curlers, just about everything,” says Dr. Cy Frank, president of the Canadian Orthopaedic Association, referring to his high-performance boomer patients. He’s also treating more of them—including Ritchie, who rearranged his schedule to have surgery in a hurry. “Dr. Frank is going to keep me going,” says Ritchie. “His goal is to get two or three more years out of these knees before I have a replacement.”
Such enthusiastic fitness goals were unheard of a generation ago, when few people in their 50s and 60s would have worked out at such a high level, or expected so much out of their aging bodies. “We’ve dispelled this myth that as you get older you can’t participate in exercise-type activities,” says Liza Stathokostas, a researcher at the Canadian Centre for Activity and Aging in London, Ont. Now, “there’s no question that you can, and you should.”
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Mind the gap
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 29 Comments
Kevin Page has released his latest report. The Globe got an early look and summarizes as so.
In a report released today, Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page warns it’s not good enough for Ottawa to simply balance the books – because of the increasing squeeze Canada’s greying ranks will place on coffers.
He predicts that even if Ottawa slays the deficit, it will still have to confront an expanding “fiscal gap” in revenue over the decades ahead that rises to $20-billion to $40-billion annually within seven decades. This will arise as Canada’s work force shrinks in proportion to its growing pool of retirees, a trend that should both slow the growth of government tax revenue and increase demands for health-care spending and old-age benefits.
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The price of security
By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 11:10 AM - 10 Comments
Behind many savings plans lurk steep costs. Who can you trust?
Michael Popovich, a dentist, suffered a massive heart attack at age 52. His doctor, not surprisingly, told him that going back to work was a bad idea. Faced with the sudden prospect of losing several of his prime income-earning years, Popovich sold his dental practice in Thamesville, Ont., and began searching for a way to fund his unexpectedly long retirement.Like many Canadians, he was attracted to the reliable monthly income stream that came with investing in income trusts (unlike corporations, trusts pay out most of their profits to investors). But he was forced to rethink his investing strategy after Ottawa said in 2006 that it would begin taxing the popular investment vehicles in four years, citing concerns about a loss of tax revenue. The value of Popovich’s holdings plummeted overnight.
Now, three years and one market crash later, he is one of millions of Canadians trying to retool their retirement portfolios. While some financial advisers are no doubt telling clients it’s a good time to get back into the stock market, you can’t blame people for being a little gun-shy. But playing it safe in an era of historically low interest rates isn’t a magic bullet either. “There are very few good options out there,” Popovich says. “Interest rates aren’t going to come back for a long time so you can’t count on that. Corporate investments are iffy because you don’t know where you’re going to go with those things.”
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Who will be the first post-boomer prime minister?
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 1:26 PM - 58 Comments
While we’re on the subject of demographics, there is also age.
Differentiating between generations is a bit tricky, the difference being as much about experience, mindset and attitude as it is a matter of timing. For the sake of argument, if you take David Foot’s contention that the baby boom in Canada ended in 1966 and include all those current MPs born after January 1 of that year, you get the following group (listed from oldest to youngest):
Rick Dykstra, Mario Silva, Gerry Byrne, Kirsty Duncan, Todd Russell, Shelly Glover, Rob Clarke, Scott Brison, Pablo Rodriguez, Leona Aglukkaq, Greg Rickford, Andrew Kania, Dominic LeBlanc, Randy Hoback, Lisa Raitt, Jason Kenney, Brian Masse, Blaine Calkins, Russ Hiebert, Helena Guergis, Rona Ambrose, John Baird, Bernard Bigras, Mike Lake, Scott Simms, Glenn Thibeault, Paul Calandra, Dean Del Mastro, James Rajotte, Jeff Watson, Michael Chong, Justin Trudeau, Eve-Mary Thai Thi Lac, Rob Anders, Steven Fletcher, Meili Faille, Nathan Cullen, Jean-Claude D’Amours, Rod Bruinooge, Megan Leslie, Luc Malo, Christian Paradis, Ruby Dhalla, Rob Moore, Brad Trost, Mark Holland, Blake Richards, Tim Uppal, Scott Andrews, James Moore, Ben Lobb, Navdeep Bains, Thierry St. Cyr, Brian Storseth, Patrick Brown, Pascal-Pierre Paille, Chris Warkentin, Andrew Scheer, Pierre Poilievre, Niki Ashton, Nicolas Dufour.
How’s a 2012 election between LeBlanc, Moore, Leslie and Bigras sound?
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The problem with not having kids
By Mark Steyn - Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 6:30 AM - 204 Comments
Saving the planet for the next generation by not having a next generation is a bad idea
Anything happen while I was gone?
Oh, yeah. The collapse of the global economy. Armageddon outta here. The ecopalypse is upon us. Down south, President Obama has abandoned the gaseous uplift of “the audacity of hope” and warns we’re on the brink of the abyss. In the old New Deal, FDR warned that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” For the new New Deal, President Hopeychangey says we have nothing but fear itself. Get used to it. In Russia, the nation’s wealthiest oligarchs have seen their net worth decline by two-thirds. They can’t steal it as fast as it depreciates. Even yard sales of Soviet nukes to chaps with Waziristani business cards won’t make it up.
The only thing booming is declinism. In Britain, the Baby Boomers are now “Baby Gloomers,” according to the Daily Telegraph’s Elizabeth Grice, who gives the impression she’s working it up into a book proposal for one of those slim volumes of contemporary manners one keeps in the guest “loo,” amusingly illustrated with line drawings of once prosperous middle-class couples reduced to trawling the supermarket shelves for bargain “wine boxes” and microwaveable “Italian-style” focaccia. In the U.S., Steven Kotler thinks this is no time to get hung up on details. The planet is going to hell. So what’s the big picture? The rooty-tootiest root cause of all?
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The United Nations: beacon of hope, or cesspool on the East River?
By selley - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 1:19 PM - 0 Comments
Must-reads: John Ibbitson on the boomers’ lament; Rosie DiManno on Afghanistan’s disabled; …Colby Cosh
Must-reads: John Ibbitson on the boomers’ lament; Rosie DiManno on Afghanistan’s disabled; Colby Cosh on “food miles”; Janet Bagnall on Plan B; Thomas Walkom on Ontario’s industrial future.
Stand by for yet another national embarrassment
Should we give a damn about the UN Security Council?The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson takes note of all the reasons Canada is unlikely to win a temporary seat on the UN Security Council. Some of them are new (the Harperites’ “right-or-wrong policy” on Israel, “coolness toward Beijing,” the perception of less interest in Africa, and a general antipathy towards the UN), and some of them are of a Liberal pedigree (the Kyoto debacle, opposing more permanent members on the Security Council). “Still,” Simpson insists, Canada has a shot at it if the government puts up a decent campaign, which it should, and it would be “highly embarrassing” if it didn’t. At no point does he explain why we should so desperately want to take our place on a body that currently includes Belgium, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica and Panama. (No foolin’-Costa Rica and Panama!)
Indeed, the National Post‘s Jonathan Kay suggests we shouldn’t care, because “everything of significance that the [Security Council] does is controlled by the five permanent members”-and after Moscow and Beijing deploy their vetoes, it actually does precious little. “Liberal-era foreign policy careerists” and others whose “status and livelihoods revolve around the empty formalities of Turtle Bay” will object, of course, and insist that tolerating certain UN members’ strident anti-Israeli rhetoric is the price one pays for being a good global citizen. Kay sneers: “If only Stephen Harper had the maturity of Paul Heinbecker”-whose recent statements he takes to task-”he’d know that such toxins must be swallowed so that Maple Leaf-festooned backpackers can bask in warm smiles as they traipse through Europe and the Middle East.”
