From Conversation to Culture Change: How Intergenerational Work Transforms Communities

It started, as many good things do, with a simple invitation.

The city was preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the May Day Festival, a tradition rooted deeply in our town’s identity. Generations had grown up with it, children weaving ribbons around the Maypole, parents lining the streets, grandparents telling stories of how it used to be “back when.” This time, the organizers wanted something more than a reenactment. They wanted the celebration to mean something.

Someone asked a question that doesn’t get asked often enough: What if seniors were part of this, not just watching, but helping shape it?

When the idea was brought to the seniors’ board, there was a pause. Not because of hesitation, but because people understood the weight of the invitation. This wasn’t about nostalgia. This was about partnership. About trust. About standing shoulder to shoulder with a younger generation and saying, “Let’s build this together.”

The plan that emerged was bold in its simplicity. Twenty-four seniors would join Grade 5 students from three local schools to dance the Maypole together. Not perform for each other. Perform with each other. Organizers in their twenties, thirties, and forties would coordinate logistics alongside volunteers in their seventies and eighties. Everyone would have a role. No one would be a token.

What followed was something quietly powerful.

In school gyms and community halls, seniors learned steps alongside children young enough to be their great-grandchildren. There were missteps and laughter, ribbons tangled and untangled, stories exchanged between practice runs. A senior showed a child how to recover gracefully from a missed step. A child showed a senior a shortcut for remembering the pattern. No one was “helping” anyone. They were learning together.

This is where ageism begins to lose its grip.

So much discrimination thrives on distance, on the idea that “older” and “younger” are separate worlds with little to offer each other. Intergenerational work collapses that distance. It replaces assumptions with familiarity. It turns abstract respect into shared experience.

On the day of the festival, the four Maypoles stood tall in the centre of the arena, ribbons bright against the spring sky. As the music began, seniors and students moved together, weaving colour and rhythm into something unmistakably joyful. The crowd didn’t see “old” and “young.” They saw a community in motion.

And then something unexpected happened.

The seniors were invited back the following year, not as a novelty, but as tradition. They were asked to help kick off the next hundred years of May Day celebrations.

That’s culture change.

Intergenerational work doesn’t just soften attitudes; it reshapes systems. When young organizers see older adults as collaborators, it changes who gets invited to the table. When children grow up working alongside seniors, it rewrites what aging looks like in their minds. When seniors are trusted with visible, meaningful roles, it challenges the quiet narrative that usefulness has an expiry date.

Importantly, this work succeeds only when it’s grounded in equality. Not mentorship that flows one way. Not “keeping seniors busy.” True intergenerational projects are built on mutual respect and shared power. Each generation brings something essential: energy, perspective, memory, creativity, and steadiness. When one is missing, the whole structure weakens.

The beauty is that action doesn’t have to be grand to be transformative.

A community garden planned by teens and tended by retirees. A storytelling project where students record elders’ histories, and elders learn new technology in return. A neighbourhood safety initiative where older residents’ lived knowledge complements younger residents’ organizing skills. These are not expensive solutions. They are human ones.

Ageism thrives in isolation. It withers in connection.

The May Day dance mattered not because it was perfect, but because it was shared. It reminded everyone watching and participating that communities are strongest when all ages are visible, valued, and involved in shaping the future.

Conversation is where change begins. Culture shifts when we move from talking about each other to working with each other.

Sometimes, all it takes is an invitation and the courage to say yes.

Seeing the Longevity Dividend: From Burden to Shared Asset

Every conversation about aging eventually seems to circle back to the same question: Can we afford it?

An aging population is often framed as a looming burden on healthcare, on housing, on public services. The language is heavy with concern and cost. What rarely makes it into the conversation is a different way of seeing things: not as a problem to manage, but as a resource to value.

This is where the idea of the Longevity Dividend comes in. It invites us to ask a better question: What becomes possible when people live longer, fuller lives, and are included rather than sidelined?

I saw a living answer to that question at the Tri-City Seniors’ annual Christmas gathering.

The room was warm, crowded, and alive with conversation. People gathered around tables, cups of coffee in hand, sharing stories that moved easily between past and present. Someone talked about Christmas mornings growing up. Another remembered the sound of boots on frozen sidewalks and the sting of cold air on bare cheeks.

One story kept resurfacing, spoken with a particular kind of fondness, the wooden crates of Japanese oranges.

For many, those oranges were the unmistakable sign that Christmas had arrived. They were rare, precious, and shared carefully. A small luxury that marked the season and stayed in memory long after the holidays passed.

As the stories flowed, something else became clear. These weren’t just recollections. They were threads of lived history, of immigration, resilience, community, and change. Knowledge carried, not in textbooks, but in voices, laughter, and shared recognition.

Then the conversation shifted.

Today, one of the signs of the Christmas season isn’t oranges in wooden crates. It’s the growing need at the food bank.

Without fanfare, the group had acted. The seniors collected 134 pounds of food and over $300 in cash donations for the local food bank. It wasn’t a symbolic gesture. It was practical, immediate care.

Many of these same people remembered walking to school every day, regardless of snow or rain, in towns across British Columbia and Canada. They remembered winters that were cold but predictable. And almost all of them shared the same reflection: no matter the weather, they didn’t worry about whether there would be food on the table.

That memory matters.

It connects past stability with present concern. It fuels a sense of responsibility, not out of guilt, but out of gratitude. These seniors weren’t acting because they were asked to. They were acting because they care deeply about the community they helped build and the future being shaped by the next generation.

This is the Longevity Dividend in action.

When older adults are fully included, they bring more than time or availability. They bring perspective. They bring continuity. They bring a long view that connects what was, what is, and what could be.

Too often, we frame seniors as recipients of care, of services, of support. And yes, support matters. But that frame is incomplete. It misses the daily acts of leadership, creativity, volunteering, caregiving, and quiet generosity that sustain communities.

The Longevity Dividend isn’t just economic. It’s social. It shows up in mentorship, in civic engagement, in the passing on of traditions, and in the willingness to notice when something isn’t right and do something about it.

What made that Christmas gathering powerful wasn’t nostalgia. It was relevance. These seniors weren’t living in the past. They were using the past to inform present action.

When generations come together around shared values, care, fairness, responsibility, the benefits flow both ways. Younger people gain context and grounding. Older people remain connected and purposeful. Communities become more resilient because knowledge and care aren’t siloed by age.

Reframing aging doesn’t mean ignoring challenges. It means refusing to define people solely by what they might need. It means recognizing what they already give, and what becomes possible when we invite them fully into the story.

At that Christmas gathering, the Longevity Dividend didn’t appear as a policy or a statistic. It showed up as food on a scale, cash in an envelope, and hope quietly passed from one generation to the next.

And that kind of dividend keeps paying forward.

Home, Safety, and Dignity: Ageism Where We Live

When her husband died after 35 years of marriage, the house went quiet in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

At first, there were visits. Condolences. Offers of help that felt sincere but short-lived. Then, gradually, the visits stopped. His children came around less and less. One son began speaking to her differently, questioning her decisions, criticizing how she handled things, and demanding items he believed should belong to him.

The grandchildren followed his lead. Calls went unanswered. Invitations stopped coming. Without a formal break or confrontation, she found herself erased from a family she had been part of for decades.

Grief has a way of hollowing out space, but this was something else. This was loss layered on loss.

The house she and her husband had just bought,  meant to be the next chapter, became filled with echoes. His chair. Their routines. The plans they never got to live. She stayed for as long as she could, but eventually she said something that stuck with me: “If I stay here, I’ll stop moving forward.”

So, she made the decision to leave.

What should have been a practical step became an obstacle course.

She was a widow on a low income, looking for a place that was safe, affordable, and close enough to services to allow her to remain independent. The listings were scarce. The waiting lists are long. Some landlords didn’t return her calls. Others asked questions that felt less like screening and more like doubt.

How old are you?
Do you live alone?
What’s your income source?

None of these questions is illegal on its own. Together, they form a quiet gatekeeping system that filters out people deemed “risky,” “temporary,” or “too complicated.”

This is how ageism shows up in housing, not as outright refusal, but as narrowing options until people are left choosing between unsafe, unaffordable, or isolating alternatives.

For older adults, housing isn’t just about shelter. It’s about safety, dignity, and connection. When those are compromised, everything else becomes harder. Managing health. Staying socially engaged. Asking for help without feeling like a burden.

For this woman, ageism didn’t arrive alone. It arrived hand in hand with income insecurity, grief, and isolation. Each amplified the other. Systems that might have offered protection felt distant and fragmented. Abuse within the family was subtle enough to be dismissed, but sharp enough to wound deeply.

Elder abuse doesn’t always leave visible marks. Sometimes it looks like pressure. Entitlement. Disrespect masked as concern. When ageism is present, reports of mistreatment are more easily minimized. “Family conflict.” “Misunderstandings.” “She’s emotional, she’s grieving.”

And so, vulnerability becomes invisible.

Housing instability among seniors is rising, and homelessness is no longer confined to younger populations. Older adults are showing up in shelters, couch-surfing with friends, or staying in unsafe situations because the alternative feels worse. Many never appear in statistics because they disappear quietly.

What makes this especially painful is that these are not failures of individuals. They are failures of design.

Our housing systems were not built with aging in mind. They assume stable income, family support, and physical resilience. When any of those slip away, the system offers very little grace.

And yet, even in these gaps, there are moments of resilience.

Eventually, she found a place. Not perfect. Smaller than she had imagined. But hers. A place where she could breathe again. Where she could rebuild routines without walking through memories that pulled her backward.

What she lost can’t be replaced. But what she regained was agency.

Stories like hers remind us that ageism isn’t only about attitudes. It’s about access. Who gets believed? Who gets protected? Who gets options?

When we talk about aging in place, we have to ask: place for whom? When we talk about safety, we must include emotional and financial safety, not just physical walls and locks.

Ageism becomes most dangerous when it intersects with loss, poverty, and isolation, when people slip between systems that were never designed to see them clearly.

Dignity in later life should not depend on luck, resilience, or silence. It should be built into the way we design housing, respond to abuse, and support those navigating life’s hardest transitions alone.

If we want communities where people can age without fear, we have to look closely at where people like her almost disappear, and decide, collectively, that disappearing is no longer acceptable.

“Not a Good Fit”: Ageism at Work and the Myth of the Ideal Employee

 It often starts with a phrase that sounds harmless enough.

“Not a good fit.”
“Looking for new energy.”
“Time to bring in fresh ideas.”

These words rarely appear in policy manuals, but they echo through workplaces every day. They’re heard in job postings, performance reviews, and hallway conversations. And for many older workers, they signal the beginning of a slow, quiet exit.

In today’s workplaces, ageism rarely announces itself openly. Instead, it shows up through practices sometimes called quiet firing or silent layoffs, strategies which nudge older employees toward resignation without the organization having to say the uncomfortable part out loud.

Sam knows this pattern well.

For years, Sam had been a model employee. Strong evaluations. Reliable performance. Deep knowledge of the organization and its people. Then, in his late fifties, something shifted. His annual review was mostly positive, but this time it included several pointed criticisms about “choices” he was making. Nothing dramatic. Nothing specific enough to respond to easily.

The message wasn’t written down, but it was clear: do better, or else.

After years of positive feedback, the possibility of being placed on a Performance Improvement Plan suddenly hovered in the background. These plans are often framed as supportive, but many older workers recognize them for what they can become: unrealistic expectations, vague goals, and insufficient support, designed less to improve performance and more to create a paper trail.

Sam hadn’t changed. The workplace had.

Then there’s Terry.

Terry works in a competitive industry that prides itself on innovation and continuous learning. On paper, the company does everything right. Training opportunities are encouraged. Professional development is funded. Staying current is valued.

But Terry noticed something over time. She was being overlooked.

Younger colleagues with less experience were offered training, mentorship, and advancement opportunities. Terry, despite her track record and institutional knowledge, was quietly bypassed. No one told her she wasn’t eligible. She simply wasn’t considered.

This kind of exclusion is subtle, but its impact is profound. When development opportunities flow toward youth by default, experience is treated as a finished product rather than an evolving asset.

I saw echoes of this when I was still working. I heard younger managers talk about the need for “new blood” and “fresh ideas.” I was asked more than once about my retirement plans, often framed as casual curiosity rather than pressure.

I didn’t ignore those comments. I responded.

I pointed out the contributions older workers were making every day. I reminded them that when experienced employees leave, they don’t just take a job opening with them; they take relationships, context, and collective memory. They take lessons learned the hard way. They take the ability to see patterns others haven’t lived long enough to recognize.

This is where the concept of crystallized intelligence matters.

Crystallized intelligence refers to the knowledge, skills, and judgment accumulated over time. It includes emotional regulation, problem-solving in complex situations, and the ability to navigate organizational dynamics with nuance. It’s not a consolation prize for declining speed. It’s a competitive advantage.

Yet many organizations undervalue it because it doesn’t fit the myth of the ideal employee, fast, endlessly adaptable, and unburdened by history. In chasing that myth, workplaces lose balance. Teams become reactive rather than thoughtful. Mistakes repeat. Mentorship disappears.

Ageism at work harms individuals, but it also damages organizations. Quiet firing erodes trust. Overlooking experienced workers weakens succession planning. And pushing people out prematurely creates instability that no amount of “fresh ideas” can fix.

The tragedy is that most of this happens without open conversation. Older workers are left to interpret signals, manage anxiety, and decide whether to fight or leave. Many choose to go quietly, convinced it’s better than being labeled resistant or obsolete.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Workplaces that thrive across generations recognize that learning flows both directions. They invest in development at every stage of a career. They value experience not as a relic, but as a resource. They ask older workers what they want next instead of assuming they’re winding down.

Ageism at work isn’t always about forcing people out. Often, it’s about failing to imagine them staying in meaningful ways.

And when organizations do that, everyone loses, not just the people shown the door, but the culture left behind when experience walks out with it.