16 hours ago
Senior Living: Rise and shine with local Breakfast Club
It's a bright spring morning at Nuestra coffee shop on Edmonton's north side. While it looks like an ordinary café in an urban neighbourhood, with sun streaming through sparkling windows and the buzz of caffeine-fuelled conversation in the air, the coffee shop means something extraordinary to Jayne Galanka.
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The shop is home to this particular iteration of Galanka's retirement project, which is called The Breakfast Club. While there is no breakfast on the table, the regular meeting of friends serves up something arguably more important than eggs and a side of bacon.
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'It's about being connected,' says Galanka, 65.
She was inspired to start The Breakfast Club by the example of her father, a single, divorced man who met monthly for a steak sandwich with a group of colleagues from his former workplace after retirement. Galanka saw her father's group as instrumental to his well-being in his senior years. She felt that creating community would also be key to keeping happy and engaged after she, too, left the office.
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Retired for three years from a lengthy career in emergency planning and response, Galanka thought she might miss her job, which often involved an element of excitement. She didn't. Sure, there was the time she learned to land a helicopter for an air ambulance service, but there were also many endless meetings that went nowhere. Since she retired, Galanka has relished being entirely in charge of how she spends her days. She follows her curiosity with impromptu day trips to local sights, has taken up orienteering, and volunteers in the community and in her neighbourhood. But after a couple of years of doing what she wanted, when she wanted, Galanka felt a need to create something, and to honour her father's legacy. About a year ago, she sent an email to family, friends and folks from a running club she has belonged to for many years to see if anyone was interested in a regular get-together. Before long, she had 28 members signed up for The Breakfast Club.
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Once a month, Galanka picks a local, independent coffee shop and pays a visit to the owner to reserve a couple of tables and to make sure the group's number — usually between five and 16 people — won't end up overwhelming a small operator. The morning I joined the group, about 10 people turned up. Most were retired from occupations that ranged from paramedic to engineer to teacher; one husband and wife pair joined to help them keep active in the face of her Parkinson's disease. A small-business owner somewhat younger than the rest arrived for morning coffee with a potted baby snake plant she had grown from a cutting, hoping that someone in the group would give it a home. Every person in the group said they were there for the same reason: to stay connected.
