Aging In Rural Canada

How well do the places where we live support the wellbeing of older adults? The Canadian population is growing older and is reshaping the nation’s economic, social and cultural future. However, the built and social environments of many communities, neighbourhoods and cities have not been designed to help Canadians age well. Bringing together academic research, practitioner reflections and personal narratives from older adults across Canada, this cutting-edge text provides a rare spotlight on the local implications of aging in Canadian cities and communities. It explores employment, housing, transportation, cultural safety, health, planning and more, to provide a wide-ranging and comprehensive discussion of how to build supportive communities for Canadians of all ages.

In western countries, our knowledge of ageing has been developed primarily through an urban lens with rural issues typically considered in relation to urban research, policy and programme outcomes. This title provides a much-needed corrective by focusing on diversity among rural communities.

In this bulletin, the authors document the rural-urban differences in population age structure in terms of the share of the total population that is senior (65 years of age and older); the rate of aging of the population; the number of communities that are aging by each of these measures; and selected characteristics of the aging communities as compared to communities that are not aging. This paper initially reviews the general pattern of aging across types of regions and then goes on to show the number and characteristics of aging communities.--Includes text from document.

Throughout the world’s hinterland regions, people are growing old in resource-dependent communities that were neither originally designed nor presently equipped to support an ageing population. This book provides cutting edge theoretical and empirical insights into the new phenomenon resource frontier ageing, to understand the diverse experiences of and responses to rural population ageing in the early 21st century. The book explores the resource hinterland as a new frontier of rural ageing and examines three central themes of rural population change, community development and voluntarism that characterize ageing resource communities. By investigating the links among these three themes, the book provides the conceptual and empirical foundations for the future agenda of rural ageing research. This timely contribution contains 15 original chapters by leading international experts from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland and Norway.