As residents of Quebec's Lower North Shore grow older, towns scramble to build seniors' residences

When Randy Jones picked up the phone and wrote down the first name on the waiting list for his town's new retirement home, he looked around for someone to high-five.

"I can't tell you the feeling that went through me," said Jones, mayor of Gros-Mécatina, one of the coastal towns scattered along Quebec's Lower North Shore.

Maison Mécatina​ has been 28 years in the making. It should be ready to welcome nine residents by February, offering the town's elderly population access to a long-term care facility for the first time.

​"You've got the fresh air coming in from the ocean that every person would give their right arm to have. It's a beautiful spot," said Jones.

Before Maison Mécatina​, the 450 residents of Gros-Mécatina had to move to neighbouring towns along the coast if they could no longer live on their own.

"It's hard to tell someone who's lived here for 90, 80, 70 years — all their life — that they have to move and live somewhere else," Jones said. 

Remoteness

Johnny Organ, 86, left Gros-Mécatina last November to join his wife in Harrington Harbour.

The towns are separated by a six-hour trip on the Bella Desgagnés mixed cargo ship.

"I worked there all my life," Organ said of his 35 years running the local fish plant in La Tabatière, one of the three communities that make up Gros-Mécatina.

The couple is now living at the Donald-G.-Hodd Pavilion, inside Harrington Harbour's CLSC. They won't be returning to their hometown despite the new retirement home.

"I think I'll stay here because my daughter is here," Organ said. 

Roaming along the wooden boardwalks of his adopted town in his new electric scooter, Organ said he is happy to have gotten closer to his family.

But for many people on the coast, moving often means leaving loved ones behind.

Jones said the cost of travelling to visit family is "astronomical," given the ferry only runs once a week in either direction. 

"This is why we've been at this for 28 years: so that seniors in this municipality can stay home."

Ageing population

Neighbouring communities want to follow Gros-Mécatina's example. 

Only three towns in the region have long-term care units. The combined spaces in Blanc-Sablon, Harrington Harbour and Saint-Augustin add up to 49 rooms, in addition to the nine that will be available at Maison Mécatina. 

With roughly 5,000 people living in the region, and a population that is aging, providing adequate resources for the elderly is a concern for municipalities, said Roderick Fequet, mayor of Bonne-Espérance.

"Many seniors are currently living in their homes, but we anticipate in the next ten years to have significant demand for residences that can provide supervised care," said Fequet.

Home care services, like meal deliveries and housekeeping, are offered by local organizations such as the Coasters Association. 

But Fequet said the options are limited once people lose their autonomy. He hopes to find alternatives to adding rooms inside existing hospitals or CLSCs.

"It's quite an expensive way of caring for seniors. In my honest opinion, it's not in the best interest of seniors, for their quality of life, to be in an institutional setting," he said.

Fequet said some residents put their own safety at risk because they don't want to be confronted with the prospect of leaving their town for medical treatment or other health services, like long-term care.

He said this problem can be amplified by financial constraints and "the prospect of leaving a rural small village where they feel comfortable."

Meanwhile, Jones hopes the idea behind Maison Mécatina will be replicated in other Lower North Shore communities.

It is being built with pre-fabricated units that will be shipped on a barge in the fall, bringing the total cost of the project to $2.7 million.

He estimates the price tag would have been double if the work had been done on-site, from scratch, with raw materials. 

​"It's a new way of doing things," said Jones.