Interview with The Briton House resident, Jack Litchfield

The location is great: 24 restaurants within just a few blocks. The subway is only a ten minute walk away. 

One of the things that we liked about the Briton House [is] the facilities. It has a swimming pool… a beautiful auditorium [with] 119 auditorium style seats, a stage, grand piano, video projector, a good audio system, a library.

The room that we had [originally] was ideal, [looking] down into the atrium. The atrium at that time was called the English Garden, and it was a nice, quiet area… full of greenery. Our balcony looked right down into it and it just reminded us of the resorts that we used to go to in the Caribbean. 

The physical move was easy for us. We had to downsize, of course, but [it] was easy for us. We decided what furniture we wanted to take. Not much, because The Briton House supplies to bed. So we just took our sofa, all our shelves, our bookcases… then walked through our condo and [picked out] all the nice little things [we wanted to keep]: the souvenirs, the artwork, the little crystal things, etc… Then we called in the movers [and] we just walked out, closed the door and left everything there. And the company came in [and] took everything... The move out was actually very, very simple. The move in was equally simple.

When Margaret [later] moved up to the care floor because she had Alzheimer's, I moved from that lovely two room suite to the room where you see it at present. That move was done by one of the guys at the Briton House… he simply came up, moved everything over. He spent several days [hanging] all those pictures on the wall... He helped me put the bookcases up… The actual move was done in an hour [and] hanging all the pictures and arranging everything took another couple of days. It was done very easily. 

Social activities [include] an exercise class four days a week. There’s another [gathering] in the library, every afternoon and every morning for people who could use some entertainment. There's movies, there's documentaries. Every Thursday afternoon, I'm in charge of something. We have two meetings [a week] of the Briton Swingers, where we sit around the table and play jazz records.

[Our favourite amenity is] the recital hall... It shows movies…. We have live concerts quite often. Sometimes they’re pop music. Sometimes it's classical, sometimes it's jazz.... We have that nice sound system on the grand piano and it's nice to see a jazz band standing up there on the stage. 

For us, it's a good place to live. We've been here 18 years… We're happy, content, and we're glad we moved in. We were quite thorough… in the extent of our search, focusing in on each place we moved at the right time. Margaret was developing Alzheimer's. We did not know that [then]... but this turned out to be the right time for us. We chose a good place. I think we chose it wisely after a good search. And we were very happy here. And I'm still happy here.