Editorial

Saluting seniors' stick-to-it-iveness

As we salute and pay homage to the many seniors in our community this week during Seniors’ week, we applaud their many commitments the community. We applaud their resourcefulness and stick-to-itiveness, and their readiness to keep on going -- and giving.
Every time we visit places like the Vanderwell Heritage Place we can’t help but recall that one of the first building blocks of the lodge was that resourceful (and undoubedly feisty) plan that a handful of seniors hatched and executed. (Well, maybe they had a hand in their planning from some more junior planners, but we believe it was their drive that led that charge.)
The execution of this scheme was brazen and brilliant, and pulled off by some residents who’d spent a lifetime scrapping and wrangling for every morsel of bread, every piece of pie. They’d never have dreamed of doing anything illegal, but took part in this facade to show just how frustrated they felt as government after government turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to their pleas for housing that catered to their needs and their pocketbooks.
Who else but six zany ladies would simultaneously stage three fictitious bank hold-ups to draw the attention of the whole community? Who else but these aged pranksters would have the gall to don those disguises, and armed with toilet plungers and water pistols drive home the point that they needed a lodge?
Of course none of it would have been possible without the very generous and benevolent Bob Vanderwell’s readiness to get involved. But we have a sneaking suspicion that there were other seniors behind the scenes, gently prodding and massaging as this batch of deadpan hilarity took shape. But no matter who hatched the plan, or who followed up with all those volunteer hours in what became the community’s labour of love, the lodge’s creation as the result of a commitment and determination that could only come from a group of people who know the worth of an honest day’s work, and are just as ready to do what ever it takes to get the job done.
Just like the fires are kept stoked and burning at the Pioneers’ Drop in Centre, thanks to a lot of determined elders, we see their footprints everywhere. From the elders who help out at the Slave Lake Native Friendship Centre to the seniors who volunteer their time help with a reading program at C.J. Schurter elementary school, seniors in our community are a going concern.
In fact it’s a good thing these ‘gold standard’’ citizens have resigned from their day jobs, because we have a sneaking suspicion they’d have to quit if they planned to do all that volunteering that’s become an integral part of their lives -- and of the community fabric.
So to each and every senior that chooses to call our community home, thank you.
Thank you for organizing, thank you for co-ordinating. Thank you for collecting, sorting, knitting, sewing and all those beautiful blankets.
Thank you for refusing to give up until we had the most beautiful lodge in the province, and thank you for pushing the province, the regional health authority and whomever it took to ensure that our health complex came complete with a long-term care wing and as many beds as it takes to keep families in our area intact and as close to home humanly possible.
All this to say that each and every one of our seniors deserves a very big thank you for picking Slave Lake and for your continued commitment to make our community a better place for everyone to live.