Pictured: Bob Elliot with wife Gail; in Halton Region chambers
By Karen Bliss
Bob Elliot has been a member of CARP since he was 59. He’s now 69. Perhaps because his wife Gail is a gerontologist and dementia specialist, he has never been one to shy away from discussions about aging or familiarizing himself with the needs of the senior population. A year ago, he became advocacy director for CARP’s Halton Chapter.
“That’s one of the issues that we encounter, the biggest hurdle, we need to figure out a way to reach people in their 40s, 50s, getting into the early 60s,” Elliot says. “They are now looking after a parent, but they also need to start to think about stuff like that for themselves. One of the things I’ve said to CARP is we’ve got to get at that.”
Four years ago, Elliot retired from Suncor/Petro-Canada, the company he had been with since 1998 (when it was still Petro-Canada), rising through the ranks to manager, real estate sales and leasing, in charge of directing a national team in the sale and/or lease of surplus properties.
Since 2012, he has also been director of Gail’s company, Dementiability Enterprises, which offers education and consulting services in the field of aging and dementia care. She has about 75 trainers across Canada and has done work globally.
“She has worked with seniors her whole life,” says Elliot. “She ran the gerontology program at McMaster University, and they wound the program down in 2012. So, she thought, ‘I’ll go do it myself.’ Her whole vision is to change the face of dementia.
“What she does is, she focuses on if somebody has dementia, how can we enable their abilities? How can we empower those who are affected to enjoy life to its fullest? So, she runs education programs for professionals, caregivers. She has a whole whack of resources, both online and hard copy.
“What I do? I laugh, because my job is inventory control specialist. If somebody has an order, I’ll send it out,” he says.
Elliot’s introduction to CARP was through his good friend Roland Fitzgerald, guest speaker coordinator for the Halton Chapter. After 42 years of watching his wife’s work in the space, he says, “I started to kind of put two and two together” and put his hat in the ring for the advocacy director role.
“As I came into this, I said I need to understand what are the key issues. So, we did a survey. We have over 6,000 households [in our membership] so that’s probably closer to 10,000, 12,000 people.
“Overwhelmingly, the top three issues were medical wait times, fear about aging, wanting to age at home versus going into an LTC facility, and then the last thing is the state that we have right now in our LTC facilities.
“And then, what I have spent my last six months doing is I’ve gone to all of our MPPs because they’re all provincial issues. I have given them the survey results and said, ‘Now, what are you going to do to help us out?’ And, they’re doing some dodging.
“The other thing I’m doing now, we’re going to launch a letter writing campaign. We’re going to give them a boilerplate letter that they can send their MPP and say, ‘These are issues we need you to be focused on.’”
Beyond CARP, Elliot has been heavily into volunteerism for the past decade, including as director and chair of the Halton Learning Foundation; director, Business Advisory Group; and as a hockey and golf coach for the Burlington Special Olympics. Prior to leaving Suncor, he was also on the Salvation Army Great Lakes Citizen Advisory Board and City of Burlington Charter Action Team, among others.
“I always knew I wanted to give back a lot,” he says.
His “helping” mentality began when he used to help out his “hobbyist farmer” father. He grew up on the farm, in Port Perry, Ontario, where his family had beef cattle, raccoons, geese, chickens, “lots of dogs, lots of cats,” he says. “I always loved having all kinds of animals.”
As a kid, there were five careers he had in mind: hockey player, race car driver, veterinarian, astronaut and rock star. Alas, he only managed hockey player, recreationally. He still plays to this day, two or three times a week, even in tournaments.
“As you get older, you get a little bit more pragmatic,” he says.
His first foray into the working world was part-time at a service station, Cashway Lumber, then he went off to the University of Guelph, where he did a Bachelor of Arts, first met Gail and worked in the summertime at General Motors. “When I graduated, my dad said, ‘Now, you’ve got to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life.’”
Fascinated by the union dynamic he saw at GM, Elliot decided to get his Master of Industrial Relations at the University of Toronto in 1982. Then, after putting his schooling behind him, he reconnected with Gail, who had gone to the University of South Florida to get her Master of Arts in Gerontology. They were married in 1984 and have three kids and three grandkids.
“I have two in Elora, and I go up and spend the day with them to help out my granddaughter. And I have another one who’s eight months and I go and spend a half a day to give my daughter a little bit of a relief. So, I spend quite a bit of time with them,” he says.
“And then, on the advocacy side, before I retired, I was on the Political Action Committee with Burlington Chamber and then when I retired, I went to work for them as their advocacy director for a period of time.
“One thing I’ve been really involved with is the Learning Foundation here in Halton. We have one in eight kids below the poverty line, which blew my mind. I’ve been very active in that for the last three or four years,” he continues. “We do scholarships, but the main thing is teachers and guidance counselors say, ‘We’ve got a kid here, they’ve don’t have shoes.’ ‘They can’t go on this school trip because they have no money.’ It’s that type of thing. We give out Walmart gift cards for $250 because a lot of times, too, there’s no food on the table at home. It’s a budget of well over a million dollars a year and that’s very rewarding to do that.”
As for what will fill his time on the CARP side of things: He says that the healthcare system right now is “broken” and they need to start looking at different ways of doing things.
“There is some movement now for things like healthcare teams, practitioner teams, rather than, if I’m a senior, I just go and meet my GP, there is a team that’s set up that might be a geriatrician. It might be a nutritionist.
“We also need to get into things like offering memberships to gyms and healthcare because those are some of the biggest issues that you encounter as a senior. One in four adults over the age of 75 slips and falls. We’ve got to be more proactive and get people thinking about that.”
“Everybody in Halton, who is running for municipal election in the fall will receive an email from us with one question: If elected, what steps will you take to improve the lives of seniors in your constituency?’ And so, we’ll try and get some profile on that, as well.
“Unfortunately, we’re dealing with stuff that 20, 30 years ago, we knew was going to happen because of the Baby Boomers moving through, and, as a government, a society, we were not proactive enough to address it and try and get some of these remedies in place.”
