Fall will officially begin soon, bringing with it cooler days, colourful leaves, and meaningful moments to recognize older adults in our community. September 7 is Grandparents Day, and October 1 marks the International Day of Older Persons—both great reminders of the wisdom, strength, and contributions of older adults in Hamilton and beyond.
In this issue, we’re sharing stories that highlight local support for seniors, global conversations about healthy aging, personal reflections, and exciting upcoming events like our Seniors Wellness Fair and Walk for Health taking place on October 4. We also have a call for volunteers and new board members—maybe it’s the perfect time to get involved!
If this is your first time reading our newsletter, welcome! At the Hamilton Council on Aging, we work to make positive aging visible in our community. You can learn more about us on our website and catch up on our last newsletter here.
Mark Your Calendars! Seniors Wellness Fair & Walk for Health– October 4, 2025
HCoA invites you to our Annual Seniors Wellness Fair & Walk For Health on Saturday, October 4th at the Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre!
Join us for a free, fun-filled day designed especially for older adults! Learn about community services & speak to local professionals at our Wellness Fair. Enjoy informative workshops, demonstrations, refreshments, and a friendly walk on the indoor track!
Businesses and Organizations that support seniors are encouraged to join us as exhibitors or sponsors! There’s still time to register to engage with local seniors and showcase your services. Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind event!
Click here or visit www.coahamilton.ca for details or to reserve your spot today.
McMaster Hosts Global Health Meeting Focused on Aging
Contributed By Lori Letts
McMaster University welcomed health experts from around the world from August 25 to 28 for an international meeting about aging and health. The event was part of the U21 Health Sciences Group’s annual gathering, where universities come together to share ideas about health education and research.
U21 (which stands for Universitas 21) started in 1997 with 21 universities as members. Today, 20 universities are part of the Health Sciences Group of U21, including ones that teach medicine, nursing, dentistry, public health, rehabilitation, and more. Each year, the group meets at a different university—and this year, McMaster was the site of the meeting, this is fitting with McMaster’s strong research on aging.
The event featured speakers from McMaster and other countries like China, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and the UK. Students and teachers shared their knowledge and learned from each other.
Topics were exciting and wide-ranging. People talked about:
- How artificial intelligence (AI) is changing health care and education
- Teaching students about dementia and mental health in aging
- How climate change affects aging and health
- Helping older adults stay mobile and independent
Even though the meeting was global, it could have a local impact. Many of the people who attended are from McMaster, which means the ideas shared could help improve health care and education right here in Hamilton—especially for older adults.
Warriors in the Quiet: Supporting Hamilton’s Seniors
Contributed by the St. Matts Team
Food insecurity among Hamilton’s seniors is not just about hunger—it’s a warning sign of deeper crises in housing, income, and health. St. Matt’s is tackling these challenges head-on, turning food delivery into a lifeline for connection and care.
Hamilton’s older adults are facing a growing crisis of food insecurity, isolation, and rising housing costs—challenges that threaten their health and dignity. St. Matthew’s House – now St. Matt’s – is responding with innovative, community-based programs that use food as both a lifeline and a gateway to broader supports for vulnerable seniors.
When in-person programs for seniors and older adults at St. Matt’s had to pause during the pandemic, we pivoted quickly to mobile food and supply delivery and increased wellness check-ins. That experience has now been formalized through a new partnership with CityHousing Hamilton (CHH): the Seniors First Response Team. Food delivery is our respectful “front door”, opening conversations about safety, health, housing, and other urgent needs with seniors living alone. Our staff also continue outreach to people in encampments, encouraging shelter access and health checks as needed.
Why lead with food? Because food is both essential and revealing. In Hamilton, one in four households experiences food insecurity, meaning they don’t have enough money to buy food. The city’s emergency food network reports a 42% increase in demand since 2020, with nearly 1,000 people reaching out each day for groceries or a hot meal. While older adults are sometimes undercounted in food bank data, many live on fixed pensions that simply cannot keep pace with rising costs of rent, utilities, and food. (City of Hamilton, Monitoring Food Affordability) (Hamilton Food Share)
At the same time, Hamilton’s senior population is large and growing: more than 104,000 residents are 65+ (18.3% of the population). Many are renters—a group particularly vulnerable to rent increases and displacement. CityHousing Hamilton alone provides homes for 13,000 residents, many of them seniors, making it a critical partner in reaching people where they live. Food insecurity, combined with isolation and limited income, creates a dangerous cycle that threatens the health and dignity of older adults. (City of Hamilton, Age-Friendly Hamilton) (Social Planning and Research Council) (CityHousing Hamilton)
What St. Matt’s is doing now
- Seniors First Response Team – emergency delivery of five days’ worth of fresh, healthy food and hygiene supplies, plus safety checks and rapid referrals to housing, health, and income supports.
- Seniors in Kitchens (SinKs) Mobile Markets – pop-up, year-round fresh-food markets at seniors’ buildings (in collaboration with CityHousing Hamilton) that combine low-cost produce with social connection and navigation to St. Matt’s services.
- HOPES – safe-housing interventions to prevent eviction and homelessness among at-risk older adults.
- Holiday Hope – matching community sponsors with low-income families and seniors during the holidays.
These programs are reinforced by broader community work: for example, the Cathedral Café on James North—run with the Anglican Cathedral and volunteers—offers a warm space in winter, a cool refuge in summer, and a hot meal, with on-site social workers to help people stabilize. In July 2025 the Café served its 118,033rd meal without serious incident, drawing praise from Hamilton Police leadership for its positive neighbourhood impact.
St. Matt’s is also completing 412 Barton, a 15-unit, deeply affordable building with wrap-around services for Black and Indigenous seniors (55+), communities disproportionately affected by income, health, and housing inequities.
Why this matters
Food insecurity in Hamilton is fundamentally about insufficient income, not poor budgeting or individual choice. Public-health analysis shows food is unaffordable for many households after paying for essentials, and social isolation further compounds health risks for low-income seniors. When we meet someone at the door with groceries, we’re often meeting them at the intersection of food, housing, health, and dignity—and we can act quickly. (City of Hamilton Food Affordability Report 2024)
Looking ahead
While the challenges facing Hamilton’s older adults are real, so too is our collective ability to respond. Programs like those at St. Matt’s show what’s possible when compassion meets innovation—seniors are not only fed, but seen, supported, and connected. With the Hamilton Council on Aging’s leadership and the community’s commitment, we can build a future where every older adult in Hamilton has the security and dignity they deserve.
Want to work on your ‘happiness portfolio’?
Contributed by Sheree Meredith (also appearing in the Hamilton Spectator on August 13, 2025)
Hamilton Third Age Learning offers three series (Fall, Winter, Spring) of five lectures each. The program runs at The Westdale Theatre, a local venue that is welcoming and accessible.
Many older adults prepare for retirement with a primary focus on financial planning. While important, it clearly is not enough.
Many retirees experience a feeling of loss of social connection and intellectual stimulation postretirement, as well as a fear of falling behind in a rapidly evolving world. Addressing this loss is important because lifelong learning and community engagement are important determinants of healthy aging.
Susan Latremoille, in her book “9 Steps to A RichLife Retirement,” suggests that older adults should broaden their retirement planning to develop a “happiness portfolio” through a process of exploring all domains of their interests and life.
Hamilton Third Age Learning offers opportunities for older adults to extend their knowledge and learn something new about interesting topics from experts in their fields. Lectures on a broad range of topics focus on “Understand and Living in the 21st Century.”
In the earlier season, topics focused on medicine and health care, cities, climate change, science, global and Canadian politics and economics, the media and other general interest topics.
The origin of the Third Age Learning movement originated in Toulouse, France in 1973 with programs now being offered around the world. Hamilton’s group was established in 2012 and continues to be run by a small group of volunteers.
Hamilton Third Age Learning offers three series (fall, winter, spring) of five lectures each. The program runs at The Westdale Theatre, a local venue that is welcoming and accessible. Attendees come from across Hamilton and beyond, a reach that is facilitated by the choice of watching the lecture following the presentation via a video link for those unable to attend in person.
At the conclusion of the lecture attendees are offered the opportunity to ask questions about the topic.
Attending the live lecture at The Westdale, however, is a special opportunity — from the moment one walks through the door you feel the energy of the audience who are excited to learn, connect with others and keep engaged in the world.
We invite you to consider joining this fall’s series — either through a subscription ($55 for five lectures) or by coming to a lecture of interest ($15 one time). Beginning Sept. 17, this season’s speakers and topics include:
• Jon Stokes: “How AI Can make Antibiotic Discovery Fast and Cheap.”
• David Phillips: “After 50 years, Finding Hope in the Climate Crisis.”
• Stephen Heathorn: “Unhooding the Hangman: Applicants for an Odious Job.”
• Mark Poznansky: “The Future of Food.”
• Lori Letts: “NORCS: Creating Supports for Aging in Place.”
Update: Registration for In-Person Seating for the Fall Lecture Series is now SOLD OUT. You can still register for Video Replays of the Fall Lecture Series Until September 12 by clicking here or visiting www.htal.ca
Opinion | Older women use cannabis. Why aren’t we listening to them?
Contributed by Nicole K. Dalmer and Sara Greene (also appearing in the Hamilton Spectator on July 23, 2025)
As cannabis continues to be legalized, commercialized, and normalized across Canada, we are long overdue for a meaningful conversation about how and why older women use cannabis and the ways in which they access cannabis-related information, support, and community.
Cannabis use among people aged 65 and over is rising steadily, with recent data showing that seven per cent of older Canadians are regular users. Yet, despite these numbers and despite public health agencies and the federal government calling for more research into cannabis use among older adults, the experiences of older women — particularly those from marginalized communities — remain under-represented and misunderstood.
Most existing studies focus on risks, addiction or mental-health problems — reinforcing stereotypes and missing the real stories behind why and how older women are using cannabis in the first place.
Cannabis use among people aged 65 and over is rising steadily, with recent data showing that seven per cent of older Canadians are regular users. Yet, despite these numbers and despite public health agencies and the federal government calling for more research into cannabis use among older adults, the experiences of older women — particularly those from marginalized communities — remain under-represented and misunderstood.
Most existing studies focus on risks, addiction or mental-health problems — reinforcing stereotypes and missing the real stories behind why and how older women are using cannabis in the first place.
Older women who consume cannabis are often navigating uncharted territory, not just because they are aging in a rapidly changing policy landscape, but because they are doing so while carrying the weight of compounded stigma: ageism, sexism, racism, and/or the persistent taboo of cannabis use. Legalization has not erased the social judgment many still face — in fact, for older women, it may have simply added new layers of complexity.
We need research that doesn’t just study older women, but includes them — their voices, their lived experiences, and their diverse needs.
We’re trying to change that. By documenting the experiences of older women through an intersectional feminist lens, our research offers critical insight into how cannabis policies — and the technologies that support them — can be more inclusive and just.
Our current study does just that. In response to the government of Canada’s 2022 legislative review of the Cannabis Act, which highlighted the need for research on older adult cannabis use, we are exploring how older women from diverse backgrounds access cannabis-related information and support, and how technology might help close the gap.
Although the Cannabis Act made way for the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada, it continues to be strictly regulated and many people continue to use it for therapeutic as well as for recreational purposes. In our ongoing research with 23 racially and gender diverse older women (trans and non-binary inclusive) who use cannabis, many participants described using it not just to treat pain or sleep issues, but also for joy, creativity, and connection.
These stories challenge the usual split between “recreational” and “medical” use, yet, women often feel they must hide their cannabis use from doctors, family, and peers due to lingering stigma — especially when they already face judgment for being older, racialized, or queer.
Each participant’s story reveals the complexities of cannabis use in relation to the facilitators and barriers in seeking out cannabis related information, support, and community. One of our participants kept asking “why is this so hard!?,” sharing their dissatisfaction and frustration in seeking and accessing reliable cannabis-related information and community online in such a way that acknowledges their privacy needs.
Difficulty in accessing information and community to support their cannabis consumption was especially frustrating as information had the capacity to be healing. Participants were perplexed as to why cannabis was increasingly accessible, given the 2018 Canadian legalization, when information about cannabis was seemingly increasingly inaccessible.
This is more than a personal issue — it’s a systemic one.
Older women are often excluded from cannabis research and overlooked in the design of public health messages and digital tools. Most studies treat older adults as a single, tech-averse group, and rarely explore how gender, race, and location influence access to cannabis education or support.
Cannabis may offer relief from chronic pain, insomnia, or anxiety — but the path to informed and supported use is not always clear. We must do better — by listening, learning, and building tools that support older women.
That starts with asking the right questions, and to engage them in answering those questions in collaborative and creative ways. Cannabis use among older women is not a niche issue. It’s a national one — and it’s time we started listening.
Isolation and Loneliness among Seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic and a digital age
Contributed by Heather Watson
Recently, I came across an article called “How storytelling helped seniors navigate the emotional toll of the pandemic” first published on McMaster University’s Brighter World on July 15, 2025. It discusses a study that looks at how older adults coped with the isolation, uncertainty, and emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two things jumped out to me in reading this article. The first was that the participants in the study (aged 55-84 across North America) participated by completing a series of online tasks, requiring ability to use and access internet. The second was that the participants all spoke English as their first language (see paragraph 4.1 in the dataset sourced in the article for reference).
Loneliness is a concern that many seniors face putting some at risk of health concerns. I shared CBC’s reporting about this in the HCOA Spring 2025 newsletter (see my article encouraging folks to visit their local farmers market as a way to socialize here). Read the original article “How storytelling helped seniors navigate the emotional toll of the pandemic” here.
The study found a noticeable dip in emotional well-being occurring about 6 months into the pandemic, around October 2020. The study required participants to write stories using the following prompts:
- Story 1: Write a story about a significant life event that occurred in your distant past.
- Story 2: Write a story about a personal life event that occurred yesterday.
- Story 3: Write a story about a personal life event that will take place in your future.
- Story 4: Write a story about an event shown in a picture.
Participants reported feeling more connected and empowered after taking part in the study. Other research from Harvard University suggests that writing is “an antidote to loneliness”.
I could not help but think of my Nana, as I often do when thinking about issues that affect seniors. My Nana was never interested in learning to use computers. She lived alone in March of 2020 when the pandemic hit, and lockdown started. She was aged 96 at the time. The only way to communicate with anyone outside her bubble was by phone, which can pose challenges. My Nana was lucky. She had 5 supportive children in her life all living locally (plus grandchildren like me) who visited regularly, and my mother took her in for most of the pandemic. When Nana required more support, the good people at St. Joseph’s Villa in Dundas, Ontario took care of her, and we all continued to visit (in accordance with the rules). She attended events on their social calendar as often as she could for as long as she could. She recently passed away aged 101, and I do not think she ever forgot how lucky she was.
I wanted to know about those seniors who are not as lucky as my Nana. Unfortunately, I as suspected, those seniors that are not able to get online (sometimes called “digital literacy”) are at a greater risk of experiencing loneliness. Dr. Brian Detlor describes a “digital divide” as “the gap between those who have the ability and access to navigate, understand and effectively use digital tools and information and those who do not. The term also describes the difference between people who can easily access and use technology to obtain information and services and those who struggle to do so.” You can read this article from McMaster’s DeGroote School of Business for more information on how to bridge the digital divide.
Those that have immigrated to Canada as adults and have English as a second language are also at a greater risk of experiencing loneliness. Statistics Canada reports that 19.2% of older Canadians experienced loneliness in 2019/2020, with levels higher among women and immigrants. As we reflect on all of these facts, we need to consider how we might help those who have limited access to the internet or perhaps don’t speak English as a first language to access storytelling as a way to build connection and resilience.
Call for Volunteers & Board Members
The Hamilton Council on Aging is always looking for passionate, engaged community members to join our Board or one of our active committees. If you can contribute just a few hours each month, consider lending your voice and skills to help us support older adults in Hamilton.
Here are a couple of current opportunities:
Sustainability Committee
Help shape the future of HCoA by supporting our fundraising efforts—including the upcoming Walk for Health on October 4! This committee plays a key role in ensuring we can continue advocating for the needs of older adults in our community. If you have experience with fundraising or creative fundraising ideas, we’d love to hear from you.
Outreach Committee
This team is behind our communication efforts—including this very newsletter! If you have experience in social media, writing, editing, or website development, join us to help grow our reach and amplify the voices of older adults in Hamilton.
Interested? We’d love to connect! Email info@hamiltoncoa.com with Committee Volunteer in the subject line to be connected with the committee chairs.
The HCoA Board is a hands-on, working board dedicated to bringing our mission to life through active involvement and community collaboration. We are currently seeking board members with strong backgrounds in finance and accounting.
If you are interested in supporting our work as a Board Member, please click here to submit your interest: Get Involved | Hamilton Council on Aging