Heavy retirement

A friend of mine was telling me that it is almost impossible for a bloke he knows to get a licence to operate a new nursing home facility here in Wellington. The County simply lacks the population base for a provincial go-ahead.

That is not great news. It means those of us who hope to age gracefully in Wellington —moving from single family home to highrise condominium, to retirement home to nursing facility—will either have to contemplate moving to Whitby or plunging off a cliff before things grow too dire. Unless… . . . Unless there is a concerted effort made to attract a bigger retirement population to the County. Right now, the County’s marketing efforts seem to be directed at the 30-something year olds with disposable income and an interest in food, drink and art. When the Drake Hotel finally gets built—unless it is sucked away by some huge $640,000 culvert— it will appeal to 20-somethings of an even hipper caste.

Yet we aren’t attracting enough oldsters, even though we sure as heck have a lot more going for us than Elliot Lake.

But who exactly are our oldsters? When I was young, oldsters seemed to be people who enjoyed listening to A bicycle built for two or Come into the garden, Maude. As I grew older, oldsters became people who listened to Tommy Dorsey or Frank SInatra. But I’ve been doing a little math, and now realize that people who are, say, 75 years old now were already 16 years old when Elvis cut his first record. Elvis fans, in other words, have already been oldsters for a decade and are now hitting the back nine of their retirement years.

So you keep rolling the clock forward and ask who is on the front nine of their retirement years. Of course, the answer is the first wave of the baby boomers—those born between say 1947 (if we give mum and dad a year after the war to find each other and another year to make babies) and 1964 (the official cutoff date in the U.S. Census to qualify as a boomer). That makes the oldest boomers about 66 and the youngest about 49. They turned 16 between 1963 (the year Beatlemania began) and 1980 (the year John Lennon was murdered).

The boomers who will retire over the next five years will all be those who spent their late teen and early adult years in the 1960s. And that, my friends, means that they are all… hippies!

Yes, it’s hippies and hippie values that we should be encouraging as we look to boost Welllington’s retirement population. There are some simple steps we could take. As people drive down County Road 33, instead of reading a boring mileage distance sign, they could see a sign saying Wellington is “not that far out, man.” And for when they reached town, we could resurrect the sign that welcomed people to “the coolest spot when the weather’s hot,” replete with the “s” defaced from the four letter word. “Skiff Cove Road” could be renamed “Spliff Cove Road.” Truck load signs could be replaced by friendlier signs that said “Just keep on truckin’!”

Those are just the cosmetics, of course. Our local park could host an annual “love-in” event. Wellington on the Lake could develop a “communal living” style model. County economic development funds could be used to start up macrame, candle and tiedyed clothing shops. Sandal repairers, guitar stringers, hair de-lousers and pedicurists could be encouraged to set up shop here. County council— assuming it could agree—could pass a resolution declaring the County a nuclear weapons-free zone, and begin meetings with not just a recitation of The Lord’s Prayer but also a singing of Age of Aquarius.

Let’s keep going. Special “Remember the 1960s” evenings could be held, for the purpose of spotting fraudsters, because as the joke has it, if you can remember them, you weren’t there. Joan Baez could be invited to visit, since she could both talk to hipsters about Steve Jobs and hippies about Bob Dylan. A municipal holiday could be declared on Jerry Garcia’s birthday, for which Slickers could conjure up a special ice-cream blend (okay, so not all the ideas are original).

Someone else is bound to beat us to it if we don’t start. The lifting will be heavy. But the returns could blow our minds. If our minds are unblown to begin with.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca