Ena and her late husband, Al
(who passed away in 1988), moved to
McCrea
Heights
in 1954 and raised five children. Wanda and Lesley still live in the area,
while Evelyn and Rick have moved to
Ottawa
and Wendy is in Bracebridge. Ena, who now lives in one of the Co-op
Townhouses in Val Caron, wants to stay in
Valley East
, but she needs an apartment.
“I loved my house in
McCrea
Heights
, but after my husband died, I just couldn’t keep it up,” explained
Ena. “I sold it in the early 1990’s and moved to the town house in Val
Caron, but even that is getting too hard to look after. All I want is a
nice little apartment with no stairs so that I can remain in
Valley East
with my friends.”
The problem for Ena, and
hundreds of other seniors who now own their homes in
Valley East
is that there is a serious lack of appropriate living accommodations for
people their age. “It’s nice to see new houses being built all over
the Valley. It shows that our town is growing and will continue to grow.
But there are a lot of people like me, especially older women, who are
going to be forced to move into
Sudbury
or to another bigger city in order to find a senior-friendly apartment
complex where we can live in dignity and get away from the work that is
involved in taking care of a house.”
Ena is very pleased with
much of what has been happening in
Valley East
. “Our bus service is getting better. We have all of the services we
need right here, with doctors, dentists, pharmacies, senior centers, etc.
The shopping is excellent. All we need now is a place to live.”
Ena points out that for
most, it is not a matter of money. “Most of us can afford to pay the
rent for a good apartment. When Dalron announced that he was going to
build a place like Lively’s Meadowbrook right here in Val Caron, I was
one of the first to put my name in. The apartments were a bit expensive,
but it was worth it to be able to live in a place which was geared to the
needs of seniors.”
MAJOR ELECTION
ISSUE ON THE HORIZON
One
of the things that bothers Ena a great deal is that everyone seems to be
spending a lot of time promoting new house development, but they are
forgetting about the older people. “As the baby boomers get older, and
as the parents of the baby boomers, like me, get older, we are going to
need apartment complexes that are located near shopping malls and public
transit. We are going to have to sell our houses. If there are no places
for us to live, we will have to move away. Other big cities seem to be
promoting apartment development, but we are not seeing anything in
Valley East
.”
It
may be necessary for Municipal Council to provide some financial
incentives for private sector developers to begin building facilities such
as that needed by people like Ena Boulay. Candidates for election to City
Council will be hard-pressed by the seniors of
Valley East
and Capreol to indicate what can be done to make development take place in
the Valley. Understandably, this is something that a private developer
must find viable. However, it is a very real problem that must be
addressed. The aging of our population is not simply a
Valley East
problem. It is something that is occurring across the entire region of
Greater Sudbury. We have been worrying a lot about how to keep our youth
from having to move away. Perhaps it is time we started to worry about
keeping our seniors here as well.
