Shirley Husband moved from Bassano to Innisfail in 1999. The 80-year-old's kids were moving to the Surrey, B.C. area anyway, so she decided to settle here where she's enjoyed making a whole batch of new friends.
“God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform,” she said while out and about shopping.
According to figures recently released by Statistics Canada, there have been more and more seniors choosing to live in Innisfail, as are families with young children. With a Presbyterian Church and a seniors drop-in to go to here, Husband says she can see why.
“It's small so it's easier to get around,” she said. “I drive in Red Deer but I don't really like it.”
Innisfail had 2,285 families, as of 2011 according to Statistics Canada, representing a change of 9.6 per cent, which was higher than Canada's growth rate of 5.5 per cent over the same period. The census family unit includes married couples with or without children, common-law couples with or without children or a lone parent family.
Trends that pop out from the data present unique challenges for government, business and health-care providers.
The data shows 18.4 per cent of the population was either 65 or older, compared to the national average of 14.8 per cent. This was a 14.6 per cent change from 2006, compared with the 14.1 per cent growth of this category across the country. Just 62.9 per cent of people here are considered “working age” residents (15-64), compared with 68.5 per cent in Canada as a whole.
Between 2006 and 2011 Innisfail's median age went up 3.99 per cent, quicker than 2.78 per cent nationally and 1.38 per cent across Alberta.
The younger population of Innisfail also beats the national average, with 18.7 per cent of the population 14 years or younger, compared with a 16.7 per cent average across Canada. This figure surged 7.4 per cent, compared with 5.9 per cent nationally.
“That suggests young families like small-town Alberta,” said Craig Teal, director of planning and development for Innisfail. “Do we have the housing they wish to have? Do we have good access to schools, good access to local parks for the kids to play, and as the kids grow older do we have good recreational facilities for them?”
To accommodate the growing number of seniors choosing to live in Innisfail it will be important to consider the maintenance-free housing stock in our community, Teal said.
One of the programming challenges is that the needs of young kids are vastly different from those of seniors, he noted, adding with a smaller percentage of people in the labour force, it will be harder to pay for too.
Local Co-op General Manager Mike Clement said such population shifts have a huge impact on his business.
“Certainly any population growth affects retail greatly,” he said, noting sales at the grocery store have corresponded with the increase in population in the town.
“We've got at least a dozen seniors that we've hired back into the workplace,” he said.
Dealing with an aging population means offering a product line to suit their needs, including half-pies and different sizes of shopping carts, he said, but also maintaining larger quantity items for the shoppers with young kids.
Tara Lorenz, Innisfail Health Centre site secretary, says long-term care facilities are ready to deal with an aging population.
“It's not even an issue at this point,” she said. “The capacity of the care is awesome here.”
The hospital is also currently in the process of hiring a children's therapist to accommodate the growing youth population.
