Why I Chose to Come Home to Saint Andrews by the Sea, an Idyllic Tourist Town
by John G. Kelly john@activeretirement.ca johngkelly.ca

Yes, I’m a Bay of Fundy Boy and, like so many Maritimers who grow up and leave, I decided to come home. But my exiting the greater Toronto Hamilton area (GTHA) and coming home wasn’t just about finding an affordable place to live in retirement. Although it is true that, as is the case for all escapees from large urban centers like the GTHA , my wife and I were able to have our dream custom home built for less than the price that we sold our condo for back in Toronto. But the choice to relocate to Saint Andrews wasn’t just about building our dream home and putting money in the bank.

Saint Andrews has a well-known reputation as having all the attributes of a Hallmark movie town with a historic town plat replete with heritage homes and a “15-minute walk” main street. And that main street is no run-of-the-mill shopping district. In fact, there is no shopping center. Instead, there is an array of specialty shops that range from customized eateries to arts and crafts boutiques. I’m never more than a five-minute drive or leisurely stroll along the main street gazing in windows displaying one-of-a-kind items that are a pleasure to look at on my way to perhaps an exhibition at the art gallery or concert at one of the local entertainment venues.

By the way, that journey might also be a comparable jaunt for golfers to play 9-18 holes on the heritage Algonquin Resort Hotel’s nationally ranked golf course or a game of tennis. A golf membership and/or daily fee in a comparable club in Toronto would cost 3-4 times the rates of the Algonquin course. Not surprisingly, many non-Maritimers who move to Saint Andrews in their retirement years are golfers in active retirement mode.

Saint Andrews is not a tourist escape. It’s a leisure tourism experience. If you’re a tourist you don’t come to Saint Andrews to sit around. You come to participate in an affordable quality holiday. No holiday is complete without entertainment. There is a weekly series of live concerts encompassing any and all kinds of entertainment by professional artists that those of us who live here get to enjoy with the tourists at prices that are literally half of what you would pay in the major urban centers. I know this personally because my wife and I were baroque music patrons in Toronto and were accustomed to paying premium prices for professional entertainment of that caliber. During the off-season in the dead of winter, we have to make do with bi-weekly concerts which is what we were accustomed to in Toronto, so we’re not missing out and we’re still getting out and about.

Leisure tourism by the sea also includes hikes and walks along the bay. The town has a series of heritage paths and walkways that make hiking or biking a must-do in the summer season. I’ve been an active holiday hiker since my teenage years. I’ve hiked the National Park Rockies and desert treks in Arizona. Saint Andrews is up to par and I’m able to do morning power walks throughout the year. If you want company there are walking clubs you can join that enable you to exercise and make friends with your neighbours.

If you want to wander in a quiet environment there’s Kingbrae Garden. They rival the famous Busch Gardens in Williamsburg Virginia and Tampa Florida and Butchart Gardens in Victoria and I don’t have to take a jet plane to stroll through a world-class garden. A “15-minute walk” will get my wife and me there.

Now there are what you can label as historic sites and venues. Notable among them is Ministers Island, where J.C. Van Horne, the iconic railway baron who built the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and linked Canada from sea to sea resided in the grandeur of his summer mansion. I’m more than just a visitor to Ministers Island. I’m on the board. Saint Andrews opens the door to opportunities to participate as a volunteer and board member for a number of non-profit and heritage sites and ventures and it’s added a new dimension to my life.

I could go on and will go on in additional posts. But you get the picture. My wife, Susan, and I have decided to embrace active community living in our retirement. Saint Andrews, an iconic heritage tourist town, is the ideal venue to get into it and get on with it as a personalized infrastructure for living life to the fullest. Give some thought to joining the crowd and there is a growing crowd opting out of urban and suburban living and opting into living life to the fullest in Saint Andrews.

By John G. Kelly
B.Com., D.PIR., LL.B.,M.S.Sc., M.A. (Jud.Admin.), F.CIS.

john@activeretirement.ca, www.johngkelly.ca

It’s time for a new paradigm. Rather than aging in place, more should aspire to live in community. “Living in community” has several advantages.
First, it swaps the passive word “aging” for the active word “living”.
Second, it exchanges “place” for “community”.[1]

Canada and the U.S. are allegedly aging societies. That’s frequently the introduction to all sorts of reports and studies that survey the existing socio-economic landscape. And its supposedly not open to argument. It’s common knowledge that average life expectancy is on the rise and life expectancy is arguably synonymous with aging. In the application of conventional paradigm logic aging has traditionally been linked with notions such as “aged” and the pejorative association to the discriminatory bias of “ageism.

However, to build on a key word in the above quote, there is already a new paradigm in place.   What is still in the early stages of realization is that Canada and comparable countries are being transformed into “longevity” societies. Yes, the average lifespan of the Canadian population is now on the verge of surpassing the 70’s and approaching 80+ years. However, boomers, who dominate the 70’s population category are not “aged”. They are creating a new population category that is much better defined and articulated in the context of “longevity”. The majority of boomers are alive and thriving in variations of boomer lifestyles.

“Health is wealth” in the “longevity” paradigm. And boomers are maximizing their “longevity” potential by embracing innovative combinations of health care that they are integrating with complementary alternative medicine (CAM). Massage therapy is an example of how the rapid growth of what not so long ago was a health remedy utilized to heal and strengthen the muscles of athletes in their prime is now in the mainstream of the longevity economy as boomers subscribe to massage therapy to tone their muscles to participate in active living.

What Ryan Frederick the author is referring to is the urban/suburban lifestyle trap that many in the “55+” category find themselves caught up in as they transition from career/family – oriented living into “longevity”. They purchased a home in the “burbs” in the career stage of life as a young couple starting a family. Ideally, it was within a walk or short school bus ride of a modern school. There was a nearby recreation centre with a basketball/volleyball court, skating rink, and outdoor sports field. The combination of work, albeit with its dreaded commute, and a robust family life kept them busy.

The children are now young adults leading their own lives, even if they’re temporarily trapped in an apartment in the basement.  The neighbourhood school in this mature neighbourhood has a declining enrolment and the recreation centre is becoming dormant. In short, the neighbourhood is no longer a community. It’s a residential enclave of dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs.

Residential millennials and boomers who populate this residential enclave are now retired or in a position to opt for an “encore career”. They’re not “aged”. They’re bored and stuck in a lifestyle in a place that they don’t enjoy. They want to live life to the fullest in their “longevity” phase of life. They need to opt into active community living.

NORCs (naturally occurring retirement communities) are ideal communities for boomers and mature millennials to engage in active community living.  A NORC IS an unplanned “naturally occurring” community that had a large proportion of residents over 60. ​ NORCs are retirement anchors. NORCs can be small towns with single family homes and “15-minute” walkable neighbourhoods, “pocket communities” in urban areas or apartment complexes.

Go to my website at www.johngkelly.ca and scroll into the NORCs & ARCs – Retirement Communities page for a readable informative guide on what NORCs are all about and how to identify an ideal NORC that fits with the “longevity” phase of your live and get started on “living life to the fullest” in your personalized longevity phase of life.

Hint: my ideal NORC is in the idyllic heritage small town of historic Saint Andrews by the Sea on the Bay of Fundy. Check it out and become one of the increasing number of boomers and millennials who come for a visit and opt into making this their idyllic active community.

[1] Ryan Frederick, Right Place- Right Time. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2021. At P.54.

by John G. Kelly
B.Com., D.PIR., LL.B.,M.S.Sc., M.A. (Jud.Admin.), F.CIS.

john@activeretirement.ca ; www.johngkelly.ca

Your home is your first place. It’s where, to coin a phrase, you feel right at home. Or it should be. If it isn’t then you need to give some serious thought as to where that first place could be.  For me, it’s historic Saint Andrews by the Sea, on the Bay of Fundy. It’s a “naturally occurring retirement community” (NORC)[1] with an eclectic mix of the “5s”

(45s,55s,65s,75s+). We have a modular customized home designed for spacious one-floor living with a view of the majestic bay. It has a full-scale basement that includes a stained-glass studio for my wife who can pursue her artistic passion, a regulation tournament pool table for me to indulge in my teenage hobby sport, and a fully equipped guest suite for guests or a live-in caretaker, if and when the need for one arises. NORCs provide you with that opportunity to build that dream home that you always knew you would feel right at home in.

The second place that everyone needs to have access to is a workplace that enables you to be productive. Ideally, that should be in a location that doesn’t entail a 1-2 hour commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic that makes you feel tired and tuckered out before you even get down to work at the start of the day. Saint Andrews is experiencing an influx of new residents in the mid “5s” who are eliminating the commute factor by working from home. It’s interesting to see first-hand just how many creative middle-management and “encore career” opportunities there are for qualified exec types who decide to leave the burbs and office towers behind and engage in remote work from that place where they feel right at home[2].

Of course, if you’re in the high “5” category and retired, like me, that second place is access to a health and wellness centre to keep physically and mentally fit. I do have a treadmill in my basement to keep me in shape when the weather is cold or inclement.  However, what is a popular daily occurrence for many high “5” retirees is power walking on the many trails that surround the town or just cruising through the historic town plat and reading the heritage plaques posted on the sides the many heritage designated homes. It’s a great way to become acculturated to this idyllic community.

The third place is the active community space for leisure and relaxation.  Saint Andrews has a nationally ranked 18-hole golf course. There is a community arena with an auditorium and curling rink.  If you’re a boater or “wannabe” sailor join the yacht club. You’re never going to experience more than a two-week wait for a musical concert, theatre, or movie night. There are summer, fall, and winter festival gala weeks where you binge out on a retinue of afternoon and evening concerts. Saint Andrews is a summer tourist mecca so there’s never a lack of leisure or entertainment events.

But if you value some leisure time on your own just take that “15 minute” walk along Water Street and drop by the home brewpub for a pint on the veranda and enjoy the view of the bay. Or if you’re an early bird strut or drive down to the end of the town plat on the edge of the bay and join the others who watch the majestic morning sunrise over Deer Island and shine daylight on all of Saint Andrews. That will make your third place your first place at the start of your day.

[1] Hunt, M. E., & Gunter-Hunt, G. (1986). Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. Journal of Housing For the Elderly, 3(3–4), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1300/J081V03N03_02

[2] Marriage – The rise of the remote husband. The Economist. April 6^th 2024 at P.17

The Happiest Place to Live

By John G. Kelly
B.Com., D.PIR., LL.B.,M.S.Sc., M.A. (Jud.Admin.), F.CIS.

john@activeretirement.ca ; www.johngkelly.ca

The World Happiest Report has ranked Canada as the eighth happiest country in the world to live in by people over the age of 60. If you’re in that age category you can and should be feeling good about yourself. But what about the life you’re living? What’s the best location to be in to live life to the fullest? Well, don’t just take my word for it. Read what author Charles Montgomery has to say  based  on a life satisfaction survey  of more than 1,000 North American adults  in his definitive book Happy Cities ( citation)

Life satisfaction is strongly influenced by location. People who live in small towns are generally happier than people who live in big cities. People who live next door to the ocean report being happier than those who don’t.[1]

Now, what if you’re over 60 and happen to live in a Canadian small town that’s situated on the Bay of Fundy with the highest ocean tides in the world? I know the answer to that question because I live in historic Saint Andrews by the Sea, an idyllic heritage town on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. Yes, I’m a boomer and I’m happy to be living my life to the fullest.

Deep down I always had a sense of this. I’m a “Bay of Fundy”. I grew up in Saint John, where the mighty Saint John River flows ebbs and flows with the bay at the intersection of the “Reversing Falls”, a tourist attraction. To the surprise of so many Canadians who live in a country where 80 % of the population live in urban centres, it gets consistently ranked as having one of the happiest populations.

Like so many Maritimers of my genre, I migrated to Toronto to pursue a professional career. Yes, I had a successful professional career as a law professor and professional services consultant. But when the door opened to live life to the fullest in an active retirement mode I “came home” as we say in the Maritimes and moved to Saint Andrews.

No, I’m not a lone wolf. Since moving to Saint Andrews, I routinely encounter others who have reached the “60s” threshold and have moved from urban centres, with the Greater Toronto Hamilton area (GTHA) being prominent, to Saint Andrews. What we “NEWBIES” routinely encounter are tourists who venture to Saint Andrews as tourists and invariably remark how this is where they would like to live. And, in an increasing number of instances they do. They return home a.s.a.p. put their house up for sale and connect with a local realtor to get them relocated to Saint Andrews.

Now, I have a lot more to tell you about all of this. And I’m going to do that by posting a series of quick “3 minute” reader-friendly informative reads on my Facebook and web site.

[1] Charles Montgomery, Happy Cities, Toronto, Doubleday, (2013) at P.35

15 Minute Walk – Historic Saint Andrews by the Sea

By John G. Kelly
B.Com., D.PIR., LL.B.,M.S.Sc., M.A. (Jud.Admin.), F.CIS.

john@activeretirement.ca ; www.johngkelly.ca

One of the idyllic livable pluses in small town intergenerational age-friendly communities is the “15-minute walk” along a traditional main street hub with neighbourhood stores and amenities owned and operated by local merchants who always have time to say “hello, how are you today”.  This is the main street that so many suburbanites wish they had as they watch those “Hallmark” romance movies where that big city visitor meets the love of his or her life in a small town and decides to live life to the fullest by making it their hometown.

That 15-minute walk is not just a dream for me. I live in historic Saint Andrews by the Sea on the Bay of Fundy. Water Street, adjacent to you guessed it, the Bayshore doesn’t have any chain stores. It’s a retail hub of two-story buildings, many of which have official heritage status, that contains all manner and sorts of locally owned and operated neighbourhood businesses. All of the shops I frequent have owners and clerks who know my name. After all, they’re not just merchants. They’re my neighbours and neighbours get to know your name and chat with you. It all makes for shopping to be a pleasurable experience and not just a chore.

During the high point of the summer tourist season, all of us who are full-time residents mingle with tourists who spend an enjoyable day just strolling up and down Water Street chatting about how friendly all of this is. And what they do find pleasantly surprising is just how easy it is to cross from one side of the street to the other. If you even look as though you’re thinking of crossing the street drivers will stop their cars smile and wave you across the street. You’re a real live person and people and should always have the right of way in a community. Yes, you’ve guessed it. There are no traffic lights in Saint Andrews; just stop signs at intersections. That’s all that’s needed.

Now there are two sort-of chain stores in the heart of the hub that are a. must. The government-owned and operated liquor store is located at the edge of Water Street and Joey’s Independent grocer, a Loblaws franchise at the other end. But they aren’t self-serve. There are real cashiers who are always available to have a quick chat. Interestingly, there’s the beginning of a reverse strategy with some of the big supermarket chains that are realizing that self-serve is self-serving their profits while inducing customers to stop shopping in person and to grocery shop online

Cashier checkouts are being reinstalled.

Go to your local library or online and get a copy of the April 5^th issue of Canadian Geographic. The article “How Canadian Cities are reinventing their shopping malls” by Abbie Hayward explains how major suburban shopping centres are being redesigned to resemble idyllic “15-minute walk”  idyllic shopping hubs. You can drive 30-60 minutes on a jam packed four land highway, park your car in a football field-sized parking lot and then walk into a different make-believe world that unfortunately is filled with chain store boutiques and part-time help.

Or you can have a real live experience in the everyday course of your life like I do and live life to the fullest in an intergenerational small town active community like Saint Andrews. Think about it.

A Four-Lane Highway Comparator

Saint Andrews Route 1 & The GTHA QEW & Highway 401

by John G. Kelly
B.Com., D.PIR., LL.B.,M.S.Sc., M.A. (Jud.Admin.), F.CIS.

john@activeretirement.ca ; www.johngkelly.ca

Yes, I do live life to the fullest in the idyllic historic town of Saint Andrews by the Sea. But on occasion, I do have to go into the city, that being Saint John, to access the kinds of goods and services you invariably find in crowded downtowns and malls. One of those recent trips was a visit to Costco.

That entailed driving on Route 1, the four-lane highway that extends from the border town of St. Stephen to Saint John and beyond.  Having lived in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (the GTHA) for 35 years I’m well versed in four-lane highway driving. Or at least I thought I was until I moved to Saint Andrews.

I’d been conditioned to know when to and when not to drive on ether the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) or Highway 401 that envelops the GTHA. Unless it was an absolute necessity, you avoided going anywhere in the GTHA that required you to use the “expressways” between 6AM-9AM or 3PM-7PM. The four-lane QEW and Highway 401 of double four lane (yes, eight lanes) are expressways in name only. In reality, they were “car – crawlers”. You were ensnared in bumper-to-bumper traffic jams. A 20 – 30km commute might well entail a 1-2 hour nerve-wracking drive with your hands tightly gripping the wheel and you never taking your eyes off the road.

Now when I decide to go into Saint John, a 110-120 km commute, I can plan my departure for any time of the day that best fits with my schedule. Once on the four-lane Route 1 highway I put my car into the cruise control mode and position myself for a relaxing ride. There are never more than 3-4 cars or trucks within my zone. I don’t have a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. Although I certainly keep my eyes on the road I can also look around and enjoy the scenery. And I never tire of looking at the Bay of Fundy or the streams and lakes that abut Route 1. Not surprisingly, 45-50 minutes later, I feel relaxed when I arrive at my destinations. There’s no rush. I can take my time to do what needs to be done and am never dreading the return drive home, no matter what the time of day. It’s just another opportunity to get back on Route 1, put my car into cruise control enjoy the scenery and listen to the radio or play a CD all the way home.

Come to Saint Andrews and experience an enjoyable four-lane commute.