Interview with Carp Commons Retirement Village - Verve Senior Living residents, Lee and Louise Wainwright

Lee
Life at Carp Commons is pretty laid back. There’s always something to do, you know, play cards, bingo, there’s entertainment, always something going on. The only time it gets a little quiet is in the evening. People tend to retire to their rooms, and that’s about it, probably watch television. The odd night we do have cards. We play euchre and Quiddler, and anyway, they’re fun games and keep us occupied.

Lee
One thing about Carp Commons is that Carp is actually a rural village within the city of Ottawa. Even though we’ve got people that come there from all over Canada, from the East Coast, from the West Coast, and through Northern Ontario, with very diverse backgrounds, the number of residents makes it just the right size that we are able to keep friendly. Everybody, there are no little cliques that form and things like that. It’s a more accepting, more friendly environment. The food’s good too. I think I probably put on a few pounds since we moved in. The staff is excellent, very friendly. We’re on a first-name basis with everybody. It’s easy to strike up friendships.

Lee
It’s like one big family there, and it is. It’s not perfect. You are going to have people with whom you get along better than others. There are a few people who pretty well stick to their rooms and get their meals served in their rooms. But that’s the beauty of it. It’s up to you. You can get as involved as you want to get involved, as much as you want to get involved. It’s good.

Lee
They’re excellent. They’re very professional. They’re friendly. I don’t think I’ve met anyone there that I could say I’m not too fussy about. Everybody is good. They’ll address any concerns you have quickly. They make sure that people are introduced well. Personally, I’m an ambassador for our floor. New people come in, and they say, "If you’ve got any questions, if you want to get shown around, Lee will be happy to do that." It seems to work, too. People fit in pretty quickly.

Lee
The fact is that our granddaughters work at Carp Commons, which helps. One of them is in the dining room, and the other one is getting her RN, but she’s already an RPN now, and she’s working there until her fall semester starts up, or her winter semester starts up at university. Plus, for most of our married life, we’ve lived within 20 minutes of Carp Commons. So we know a lot of the local people. Both our sons live within, well, one of them, the one that lives there, right there in the village of Carp, and it’s his two daughters that work there. Our other son is about 20 minutes away. It’s been part of our community.

Lee
It was easy. We’d already done some downsizing of the house, and I think we got rid of too much furniture at the time because we’re going to have to go and pick up a few new things. But the process was easy.

The staff gave us all the information we needed, Pat and Rebecca, and the paperwork was not too onerous. The room was available when we wanted it, and it was in great condition when we moved in. The housekeeping staff is great. They go out of their way to make sure your room is always clean and tidy, and probably do more than they have to sometimes.

Louise
On the second day. We put clothes in the closets, made the bed, and put the dishes in the cupboard. Then we said, well, let’s go down for a coffee. We did that, and the first thing we knew, we were talking to staff people, Haley and others that had moved in a short time before, and others a couple of years or a year or so before. It didn’t take long.

Lee
We moved in on December 15th, and my two boys helped us move in. We weren’t long, I think maybe an hour, an hour and a half, and we had everything we needed in the room and ready to go.

Louise
Start packing.

Lee
Don’t be afraid to come in there. You’ll love the staff, you’ll love the food, you’ll love the people. It’s just the right size. We have had quite a few open houses there, and I think most of the people wind up coming in because they’ve heard from other residents how good it is. One of the things we talk about in our men’s group is how well the size works. There are about 14 of us who get together once a week for an hour and a half and have coffee and talk about current events.

One fellow here had a teacher friend who had moved into a residence in Toronto. It was a large one, maybe 300 or 400 residents. Carp is around 100 to 125, depending on the time of year and how many married couples are there. It just seems to be the right size. This fellow said he didn’t like it in the larger place. He wasn’t comfortable. He had a hard time making friends because there were a lot of cliques, and it wasn’t nearly as friendly as there.

This is rural by nature, and I think that probably has more to do with it than anything.

Lee
I’m also part of the resident council. We do have a resident council there. I will say one thing. Anytime we put any reasonable requests through to have things done differently, as long as they’re reasonable, management has been quite accommodating. They are subject to some restrictions placed on them. Now you might get into something to do with the food. There’s always the health and safety aspect of food. As long as your requests don’t violate that, they’ll look after them.

There are a few people who would like to have things like directories, but we pointed out that if that list gets lost, you’re feeding possible scammers with some great information. So that was one thing that we denied.

But no, I wouldn’t say there are particular challenges because they are open to solutions. It’s worked well so far.

Lee
I can’t think of anything we would do differently. Both of us are reasonably healthy. I started having problems with my heart a few years ago, but that’s all been resolved with a pacemaker now. This is just the perfect solution for us. We don’t have to cook anymore. We can get as much done for us or as little done for us. If we don’t want the staff to come in and make our bed, for example, or do our laundry, we still do that just to keep active.

If there were anything I would do differently, and it’s not a reflection of the fact that we’re not happy there, I might have tried a different residence for comparison. We did try one residence on respite for a month, and we wound up picking Carp Commons anyway.

When we found out our granddaughters were there, and we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we couldn’t stay in our house any longer, and the fact that we sold at the right time, we felt good about the decision. We came out probably quite a bit ahead of younger people today in that they’re having to pay those higher prices.

Lee
Don’t hesitate to go in and try one. Try it and see if it’s to your liking, and give it a month. You’re not going to know in a week. Give yourself a month in a residence and look at all the aspects of it. The biggest thing to remember is that these are people you’re going to be living with there, people you’re probably going to be spending 12 hours or more every day with, and you have to get along with them. Don’t let yourself get isolated.

If you take it all into consideration, the accommodations are great there. They’re fairly modern. I think that place is only a little over five years old, maybe coming on to six years old. So everything’s in good condition. The staff are excellent, the food is excellent, and the other residents are excellent all around. We’re happy.