Radical Resthomes
Radical Resthomes - it sounds like an oxymoron. But that's the idea -- to be radically different from the stereotype.Aren't seniors' residences boring places for bingo, movie afternoons, and white bread sandwiches with the crusts cut off? Or worse still, prisons for the incarcerated elderly? Not in Janet Torge's world....
Radical Resthomes - it sounds like an oxymoron. But that's the idea -- to be radically different from the stereotype.
Aren't seniors' residences boring places for bingo, movie afternoons, and white bread sandwiches with the crusts cut off? Or worse still, prisons for the incarcerated elderly?
Not in Janet Torge's world.
For thirty years she has been imagining -- and re-imagining -- a different way of growing old. In 2011, Janet heard our documentary about the Baba Yagas, a group of ageing feminists in Paris who designed a vibrant community where they could grow old together.
Janet Torge - who lives in Montreal - wants to see similar experiments take hold in Canada for men and women: alternatives to the profit-driven, regimented seniors' residences all over the country. She has found hungry audiences wherever she goes.
David Gutnick's documentary, "Old People Should Live Everywhere", finds Torge in a jam-packed Ottawa backyard, acknowledging a very warm welcome.