A group of local parents in the Peterborough area have banded together with a goal of providing an alternative living option for their adult daughters living with a development disability.

While the ‘Girl Power’ project is in its earliest stages, the group’s vision is clear: to provide a permanent, safe, and supportive home where women with developmental disabilities can live with dignity and a high quality of life.

Currently, seven parents of adult daughters who are either living at home or in group homes have joined the project, each concerned about their daughter’s future and unimpressed by the limited options available.

“We just want to make sure that when we’re gone, our kids have a facility that’s going to be safe for them to stay in,” explains Jane Bischoff, a Peterborough nutritionist who is the lead behind the project. “I want my daughter to be in a girls-only facility and apparently they don’t exist.”

So Jane, a single mother to 30-year-old Jenny who is diagnosed with moderate autism, is on a mission to create one. The Girl Power project will see the seven women living under one roof with support provided by trained staff members living on site.

“We’re looking to find something permanent for the girls,” Jane says. “But we want all the workers to be female and, if there is a man that enters the house, he has to have authorization. That doesn’t exist in Ontario right now.”

When she began thinking about housing options for her daughter Jenny, who is unable to live on her own, Jane connected with other parents from her daughter’s day program and found that many shared her concern for their own daughters’ safety.

“I’ve had instances where Jenny was groomed for sexual assault,” Jane points out. “I don’t want to put her in a group home where that’s prevalent.”

Jane quotes a recent media release from Inclusion Canada, a national federation supporting the inclusion and rights of people with an intellectual disability and their families, which states that people with intellectual disabilities are five times more likely than those without a disability to experience sexual assault. The release goes on to say that they are most often abused by people paid to support and care for them or people in relationships of trust.

“Most of the group homes I’ve talked to, they say they encourage relationships between the residents,” Jane says. “As a mother of a daughter, that’s a big red flag. She can see guys during the day in her day program, but at night, no, I don’t want any men around.”

Even if Jane had trust in these homes, the wait times can be upwards of 10 years long — a particular concern for aging parents.

“The other option is to keep her at home isolated and just hire people to come in and help, but socially I don’t think that’s good for my daughter,” says Jane. “She’s very social so the more people I have around her, I think it’s going to be more stimulating to her brain.”

Jane explains the goal of Girl Power is to appeal to “parents that want to protect their daughters from as much harm as they possibly can” by creating that alternate solution. To provide an inclusive space, Girl Power is currently seeking input from interested parents no matter their daughter’s disability or level of care required.

“We’re just looking at everybody and focusing on the dynamic of it,” says Jane. “Parents shouldn’t feel like we’re going to rule them out just because of their child’s diagnosis.”

Similarly, parents shouldn’t feel excluded based on location either, Jane says, noting one of the current members resides in Ajax.

The parent-led organization is currently in the process of investigating real estate options in the Peterborough area, including potential opportunities with Habitat for Humanity or The Mount Community Centre.

The group has discussed if renting would allow them to secure a home much faster, though the parents are fearful that the landlord could have them removed at any moment. The aim, instead, is to find a five or six-bedroom house that would ideally be large enough for support staff to live on site as well.

“It’ll be a good opportunity for people in Peterborough that are in the field to come and work and have likely a base salary plus free room and board,” says Jane. “They would have their own separate washroom, and there would be a community room for everybody to get together if they want.”

As they search for real estate, the group is taking steps to ensure the process of developing the care home is efficient while still meeting the needs of the residents. Steps include forming a board of directors with financial and legal experts, creating more awareness and support through the development of a website, and exploring technologies for home and personal security.

To raise funds to pay the hired support staff, Girl Power is also in the process of applying for grants and funding through the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, and registering as a charitable organization to accept public donations.

With these steps in place, Jane hopes to have the home ready for the girls to move into within a year’s time.

“Families that have done this in the past have taken 10 years to do it — every two weeks they met for 10 years,” Jane says. “We all decided, no, that’s not happening. We don’t have 10 years.”

A group in Peterborough called Shared Dreams for Independent Living was similarly formed by five families looking to find a home for their adult sons with an intellectual disability. Although the group first formed in 2013 and incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2015, the search for a home and the wait for government funding meant the five men were unable to move into their new home at the Mount Community Centre until 2021.

Girl Power is using the knowledge and experiences from Shared Dreams for Independent Living to speed up their own process, as well as knowledge from another similar group in Peterborough called Casa De Angelae, which provides a communal home for adult daughters living with Down syndrome.

This collaboration and support is exactly what Jane hopes will come out of Girl Power, which she imagines will become a guiding initiative for other cities and communities.

“We don’t necessarily want money — we just want connection.” says Jane. “What’s lacking right now is the communication between parents. That’s where the difficulty lies, because you feel isolated. You feel against the world, like there’s nothing safe for you to find for your daughter. We want to get rid of that hopeless feeling, so that’s what we’re trying to accomplish. Whatever we end up with can be a template for other families.”

Those who interested in supporting or learning more about Girl Power can reach out to Jane at nutritionistjanebischoff@gmail.com.

This story has been updated with a correction: Jane Bischoff is a resident of Peterborough and not Lakefield.

Weeks after the Ford government reversed its decision to remove 15 parcels of land from the protected Greenbelt for housing development, his government is also reversing its decisions on the official plans for 11 municipalities — including the City of Peterborough.

Ontario’s housing and municipal affairs minister Paul Calandra made the announcement in a statement released on Monday (October 23).

“Since becoming Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, I have made it a priority to review past decisions, including minister’s zoning orders and official plans, to ensure that they support our goal of building at least 1.5 million homes in a manner that maintains and reinforces public trust,” Calandra said. “In reviewing how decisions were made regarding official plans, it is now clear that they failed to meet this test.”

The Ontario government approved the City of Peterborough’s official plan — a key planning document that guides the long-term growth and development of the city until 2051 — on April 11, subject to 61 modifications provided by the housing and municipal affairs ministry.

According to the province, the 61 modifications to the official plan were made “to address provincial policy direction related to growth management, housing supply, cultural heritage resources, land use compatibility and the protection of natural heritage features and drinking water.”

Some of the modifications represented substantial changes from the version of the plan submitted to the government by previous city council in 2021, and could not be appealed.

Two of the modifications including two new special provisions, one allowing around 2,600 new housing units to be built at 420 Old Towerhill Road and the other allowing around 700 homes to be built at 1694 Driscoll Road. Another modification for the Coldsprings planning area removed the designation of 80 hectares of developable land for employment use and 60 hectares for other community uses.

Other modifications included removing references to rural transitional lands as excess lands that would not be significantly developed before 2051, removing a section on culture heritage resources, and removing a eight-storey maximum building height limitation in the downtown core. Several developers had written to the province to object to elements of the city’s draft official plan.

“As soon as I am able, I will be introducing legislation that would reverse the official plan decisions for Barrie, Belleville, Guelph, Hamilton, Ottawa and the City of Peterborough, the Regional Municipalities of Halton, Niagara, Peel, Waterloo and York, as well as Wellington County,” Calandra said.

“This legislation would wind back provincial changes to official plans and official plan amendments, except in circumstances where construction has begun or where doing so would contravene existing provincial legislation and regulation. This includes winding back changes to urban boundaries.”

Calandra said municipalities will be asked to submit changes and updates to their official plans to ministry staff within 45 days, including information on projects that are already underway.

“In recognition of the costs incurred by municipalities arising out of this decision, the province will work with impacted municipalities to assist with related planning and staffing costs,” Calandra added.

Don’t panic! It’s just aging.

Sally Chivers, professor of Gender & Social Justice and English Literature at Trent University, is here to tell you why in season two of her podcast called “Wrinkle Radio.” Launching soon, the second season will introduce all-new topics on aging in culture with insight from professional academics, scholars, and researchers.

Proving you only get wiser and better-looking with age, things are heating up for the podcast’s second season. Not only did Wrinkle Radio get a new whimsical logo courtesy of Emma Scott Designs but, after a competitive process, the podcast has been included in the inaugural cohort for the Amplify Podcast Network’s Sustain Stream Podcasts. Amplify Podcast Network supports and builds scholarly podcasts from people trying to make research widely available in podcast form, just as Chivers does with Wrinkle Radio.

“I wanted to think about the conversations we have in academic life and how they’d be enriched if we had them in the public as well,” Chivers says. “I want to get different conversations about aging happening right in the public and make sure I showcase knowledge I have privileged access to as a professor.”

First inspired by Margaret Lawrence’s 1964 novel The Stone Angel, which she read as a teenager, and Hiromi Goto’s 1994 debut novel Chorus of Mushrooms, Chivers began her early academic research by studying the depiction of age in film and literature for her thesis.

Since then, Chivers has expanded her research to study long-term residential care and disabilities in aging, participating in international conferences. She has co-edited two books and written two (including her “proudest professional moment” in the publication of The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema), published umpteen book chapters and academic papers, and has even made short films to create conversations around aging.

Adding to her many accolades, including winning Trent’s 2021 Distinguished Research Award and co-founding the Trent Centre for Aging & Society, Chivers began Wrinkle Radio as a sabbatical project, with season one launching last December.

That first six-episode season covered topics from greying hair, age segregation, sex, the fear of aging, and a lot more. In each episode, Chivers was joined by other scholars who to create conversations around their own studies in gerontology, aging, sociology, and health.

“A lot of them are more qualitative data-focused researchers, which is important since I’m not focused on that in my research,” notes Chivers, adding that she is still very much a storyteller in her work since she studied literature in school. “That’s what I’m trying to do in the podcast — turn that very important knowledge into story form.”

For example, in season one’s first episode, Chivers explores the discourse around the much-talked-about dismissal of CTV news anchor Lisa LaFlamme in August 2022. In the podcast episode, which is centred around what grey hair represents in the workplace, Chivers interviews two women — one who dyes her grey hair and one who embraces it.

“In this podcast, we’re not trying to say ‘Do this and don’t do that’,” Chivers says. “Look whatever age you want, but do have some awareness about why you’re choosing or not choosing to do that and think about who does have that choice and who doesn’t.”

The first episode of season two is titled “Information Piles and Palaces” and will feature guest Nicole Dalmer of McMaster University’s Department of Health, Aging and Society talking about how to get informed about dementia care and the role of the public library as one ages.

The season will go on to welcome more expert guests exploring topics like the role of music in aging, the “troubling” future of nursing home care — which has been a major focus of Chivers’ own work — and finally talking about the thing that gave the podcast its name: wrinkles.

“I mean it in terms of wrinkles on the face, obviously, but also the way that we hit a snag or wrinkle in our life,” says Chivers, adding that the episode will explore the history of Botox as a wrinkle-smoothing technology. “When I started really listening to them, I noticed a lot of podcasts like this came out of moments in life when you thought life was going in one direction, and it’s gone in another.”

Chivers explains people will hit a point in their lives, whether at 50 years old or at 80, when they suddenly realize they’re getting older and they start thinking about what that means for them. She adds that, while it’s easy to find accessible resources and podcasts for those who need information, for example, about Alzheimer’s after a spouse has just been diagnosed, resources like Wrinkle Radio — which includes everyone in the conversation of aging — are harder to come by.

“Aging is important to all of us across a lifespan,” Chivers says. “I wanted to make sure that people in their 30s and 40s are also thinking about what it means to grow old and not just thinking, ‘Well, that’s something that’s happening to those people over there.’ Instead, we’re thinking ‘How is this part of the community I live in?’ and ‘How is this part of my future experience?'”

Surprising Chivers, her podcast has made it to audiences across the globe with listeners in six different continents. That reach has made Chivers become more conscious of the cultural assumptions she makes in the podcast, which is something she plans to explore more in upcoming seasons.

“Many of the things we worry about in relation to growing older in North America are more specific and cultural than we think they are,” she explains. “Growing older since the minute we’re born is universal, but the way that happens is really particular right to a moment in time and place and norms.”

In coming seasons of Wrinkle Radio, Chivers plans to look at the ways in which other cultures encourage interdependence and rely on each other more than in North America and how that has an impact on aging.

VIDEO: “Magic Numbers” by Sally Chivers

After being closed for three years for a rehabilitation project, the Bobcaygeon Swing Bridge is now open to vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

Parks Canada made the announcement on Friday (October 20) in a media release, although the federal government agency responsible for infrastructure along the Trent-Severn Waterway said “another short closure” would be required next spring.

The project to rehabilitate the bridge, which began in October 2020, was originally scheduled to be completed in May 2021. Delays with the fabrication and delivery of hydraulic and mechanical components, and the discovery that some components of the bridge were in worse condition than originally anticipated, changed the expected completion date to summer 2021.

In July 2021, Parks Canada announced the bridge would not reopen that summer since key mechanical components involved in rotating the bridge needed to be refabricated as they did not meet safety and quality standards. The refabricated components were to be installed in October 2021 following the closing of the navigation season, with the bridge expected to reopen for vehicle use in December 2021.

In December 2021, Parks Canada announced a new consultant has been brought onto the project to review and finalize the design and the refabrication of required components for the bridge. After the review of the project, the contractor advised Parks Canada the reopening of the bridge needed to be delayed to spring 2022 due to issues mainly associated with the mechanical component refabrication.

In February 2022, the reopening of bridge was delayed until fall 2022 as the refabrication of the mechanical components for the bridge had been slower than expected. Mechanical components and hydraulic equipment manufactured for the bridge were expected to arrive on site in September. In April, June, and August 2022, Parks Canada advised the bridge reopening continued be on track for fall 2022.

In October 2022, Parks Canada announced the bridge would remain closed through the end of 2022 due to a delay in receiving expected mechanical components and hydraulic equipment manufactured for the bridge.

In January this year, work continued to install mechanical components as they arrived on-site as well as working to complete the installation of the wooden bridge deck. In March, a major milestone was reached with the successful balancing of the bridge, allowing it to be lowered onto its centre support. In April, the bridge was swing manually for the first time. In May, installation of the hydraulic and electrical systems for the lock was completed.

Over the summer and early fall, configuration and installation of mechanical equipment under the bridge was completed, as well as installation and levelling of the end ramps, forming and pouring of concrete, and testing of the hydraulics. Site cleanup, backfilling and landscaping, plate adjustments, and installation of the flashing on the bridge was completed.

“Parks Canada would like to thank the Bobcaygeon community for their patience and understanding during the construction period,” reads the media release.

The bridge will be temporarily closed again in the spring prior to the opening of the navigation season, so that the final mechanical components required to optimize the bridge swing operations can be installed and to allow commissioning activities to be completed.

Parks Canada says it will provide more information on the timing and duration of this closure in the coming months.

Linda Shisko, one of Peterborough’s hardest-working and most dedicated volunteers, was recognized on Friday morning (October 20) in the lobby of Market Hall Performing Arts Centre.

Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal attended the event to present a letter and certificate of achievement to Linda, who is retiring in advance of her 73rd birthday from almost 30 years of volunteering. Linda’s birthday was also celebrated at the by-invitation-only event, which included staff from Public Energy Performing Arts as well as Washboard Hank, who provided musical entertainment.

“The work that you have been doing as a volunteer for many groups in the City of Peterborough over a very long of period is just the inspiration we need,” Mayor Leal told Linda, before reading his letter to Linda recognizing her contributions to the community and presenting her with the certificate from the mayor and city council.

Linda has been living with the effects of a traumatic brain injury she sustained as a teenager.

Since 1996, with support from Community Living Trent Highlands, Linda has volunteered her cleaning services every week for at least a dozen local non-profit agencies, including the Peterborough Arts Umbrella, Peterborough GreenUp, Artspace, James Strath Day Care, Sadleir House, OPIRG, the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce, Trent University’s blueboxing program, the Market Hall Performing Arts Centre, and — for the past 20 years — Public Energy Performing Arts.

“Linda, I’ve had an opportunity to make a lot of presentations during the special privilege I’ve had of being in public life,” Mayor Leal said. “But today is one of the most important ones I’ve ever done, to somebody like you and what you’ve done for our community.”

Peterborough-area high school students will have a chance to step into the shoes of Peterborough County’s top elected official with the “Warden for a Day” contest.

In celebration of Local Government Week this week, Warden Bonnie Clark is inviting youth in grades 9 to 12 who are residents of Peterborough County to enter the contest, on now until Friday, November 3rd.

The contest winner will be invited to participate in the Peterborough County council meeting at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 22nd, followed by lunch with Warden Clark at the county courthouse, a tour of county facilities, and some prizes from Peterborough County.

Peterborough County’s “Warden for a Day” initiative aims to raise awareness among young people about civic engagement with local government.

The initiative will also inform high school students about the responsibilities of the Warden, the services provided by Peterborough County for its residents, and the various opportunities for careers and elected office within local government.

Students interested in entering the contest can visit www.ptbocounty.ca/wardenforaday, where they will be asked to upload a creative 60-second video to YouTube answering two questions: what do they love about living in Peterborough County, and what is one thing they would do as Warden.