Campbell Eldercare Consulting
Specializing in Eldercare Issues

The long road to gerontology and eldercare consulting

My Path to Gerontology

by Jacqueline Campbell

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My widowed father had a slight stroke in 1978, and although there were no visible after-effects, I felt that it was time to be more involved in his life.

Up to that point, he had spent a year with one of my brothers following my mother’s death, and then a few years in his own apartment in Montreal, working, eating out a great deal, and not maintaining his living space very well. He stopped work when he had the stroke, and this seemed the moment to ask him to come for an extended visit to my home in Toronto so I could fatten him up and observe him.

When he came for his visit, I introduced him to all the neighbours and friends, with whom he related well. So even though he had left Montreal with all its well-known haunts, he had plenty of psychosocial supports at his disposal in Toronto.

So he stayed, and he stayed until 1990, through two arterial replacement surgeries and a couple of hospital admissions for unstable angina. We renovated the basement to make an adequate living area for him, and eventually moved to a larger house in the same neighbourhood.

Bringing up Father is never easy, but my father presented rather more of a challenge than many I have known.

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