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The moment Jean Goldstein stepped into the elevator of her new home, she wondered if she'd made a big mistake.

A practical woman with a streak of whimsy and a dry sense of humour, she'd always cherished her independence, even as she celebrated her 85th birthday. But her husband's heart problems had her dialling 911 every time he felt a twinge in his chest, and living on their own just became too stressful.

So she persuaded Milton to move to the Terraces of Baycrest, a retirement home in north Toronto. Their children helped them settle into their sunny 7th-floor apartment.

All was going well and then, ding – she walked into the elevator. Mrs. Goldstein looked at the crowd of people using walkers and wheelchairs, people who looked much older than she felt – and panicked.

“What am I doing here?” she thought.

Canada is getting older. The number of people aged 65 and up has more than doubled since the 1920s, according to Statistics Canada, and will double again in the next three decades. By 2031, one in four Canadians – an estimated 9.8 million – will be a senior, up from roughly one in 10 today. Life expectancy is steadily rising – it now tops 80 years – and medical advances are keeping people healthier for longer than ever before.

All of those people are going to need somewhere to live. In Ontario, industry experts say the province needs 80,000 new retirement home spaces over the next 20 years. The number of independent-living homes for seniors jumped 30 per cent last year in British Columbia. And Quebec developers broke ground on more than 900 retirement apartments last year.

Retirement homes offer a stepping stone for seniors like the Goldsteins, who want independence but also need a medical safety net, a compromise between living on their own and going to a nursing home.

That doesn't mean the choice is easy. Moving to a retirement home requires a huge adjustment. Not only do independent seniors have to redefine themselves as people who live in an “old folks' home,” they have to learn to navigate some unexpected social terrain.

When most people look at a retirement home, they see what Mrs. Goldstein saw in that elevator: disability, dullness and eventually death. At the Terraces of Baycrest, the average age is 88, the average hair colour is white, and the average pace is slow.

But there's a lot happening beneath that quiet surface. The residents are old, and many are frail, but they're not done growing, they're not done learning, and they're not done with the messy business of love and loneliness and rage and joy that defines the human experience.

Forget God's waiting room: Life in a retirement home is more like high school. There's gossip. Cliques. Flirting in the hallways. There's the worry about not fitting in, and the frustration over adults who just don't listen. You're the big man on campus if you can drive a car, and lunch is the main social event of the day.

Except that at this high school, nobody wants to graduate.

Freshman year

Most people at the Terraces say they made the decision to move here themselves – still, many struggle with sadness over their loss of independence, privacy and sense of self.

“The whole idea of a social environment, a community setting – they're not used to that, they're used to being in control of their own home,” says Heather Lisner-Kerbel, a Terraces social worker with 20 years' experience. “There's grieving over the loss of yourself, of who you were. We try to help them focus on what they can do.”

Seymour Hersch, a 77-year-old charmer with a weak heart, decided to move to the Terraces last winter, when his recovery from a heart attack coincided with noisy renovations at his apartment building. Living in a retirement home made him feel old at first, and he had to remind himself of the family motto he wears on a gold chain around his neck: “Live, laugh, love.”

“I thought I'd come in here, meet some nice women, start a relationship,” Mr. Hersch says. But it hasn't quite worked out that way. “Have you seen the women who live here?” he protests. “They're old!”

He felt unsure of himself for the first few days. “My whole life turned upside down,” he says.

“It's a complete change of life,” agrees Sylvia Miller, an 89-year-old widow who left her Florida condo to live closer to her sons in Toronto.

She's sitting with Mr. Hersch on the floral-patterned, upholstered chairs on the first floor of the Terraces, which resembles the lobby of a Holiday Inn – slightly dated but clean; comfortable but impersonal. Sit here long enough and you can watch the world go by, or at least the world of the 146 women and 41 men who call the Terraces home.

The 11-storey facility is run by the Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System, one of the leading centres for aging research in the world. It's not the fanciest retirement home in town, nor the most run-down. Retirement homes can include everything from lavish properties with crystal chandeliers and marble floors to drab, dormitory-style buildings. Some require 100-per-cent independent living – they're really apartment buildings with an age requirement – while others offer maid service, meals and medical care approaching that of a nursing home. The Terraces falls somewhere in the middle.

In the mornings, the lobby bustles as some people head to exercise classes while others catch shuttles that take them shopping or to visit friends. Everyone gathers at noon for lunch, the main meal of the day, taking their assigned seats at round tables in a sunny dining room that always smells vaguely of boiled meat.

After lunch, groups of three and four linger in the lobby to chat, comparing notes on their grandchildren or discussing the latest political scandals (in Ottawa or at their own residents' council). As the afternoon sun moves over the skylights, most move on to their discussion groups and bridge clubs, and cede the chairs to solitary figures, some slumped over and dozing, others staring blankly at the dark carpet.

“You say hello to 10 people and only five will say hello back,” Mr. Hersch says. “The other five are in a different world.”

“You get used to it,” Mrs. Miller says, a note of resignation in her otherwise bright voice.

When the Terraces opened in 1976, it was for the able-bodied only, and didn't admit people who used canes, much less walkers and wheelchairs. But times have changed, and so have retirement homes.

Because people are living longer and want to live as independently as they can for as long as they can, the population in retirement homes has grown both older and more diverse. At the Terraces, residents in wheelchairs mingle with the physically fit, and an 80-year-old in the early stages of dementia may live next to a centenarian who's sharper than most 30-year-olds.

When you strike up a conversation here, you never know what you're going to get.

The fish bowl

One facet of life that takes some getting used to is what Terraces program director Sheila Smyth calls “the fish bowl.” Gossip flies around these hallways at a speed that would put text-messaging teenagers to shame. Residents live in private one-bedroom and studio apartments with doors that lock, but once you step outside that door, what you wear, how you eat and who you socialize with are all grist for the rumour mill.

After 60-plus years of living in a private home, Ms. Smyth says, “your life is much more public.”

Mr. Hersch got a view of the fish bowl when he walked into the lobby late one night after visiting with his family. A group of four residents he had never met were chatting by the door.

“Do you live here?” one woman asked him suspiciously.

“Of course he lives here,” her friend said, before he could answer. “He's in the coffee shop every morning at 8 o'clock having coffee and a cheese bun.”

The gossip makes some residents withdraw, guarding their private lives carefully.

Most just shrug it off – or join in. Mr. Hersch decided he might as well give the ladies something to talk about.

The other day, he says, he was strolling through the lobby when a woman walking behind him said, “You walk just like a man.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You're walking along with your hands in your pockets,” she said.

Mr. Hersch pivoted and grinned at her. “How do you know I got pockets?”

The woman blanched and scurried away. Mr. Hersch laughs gleefully at the retelling. “Not everyone appreciates it,” he says. “They want to be bitter and have a sour puss all the time, that's their business.”

Drama club

With all the drama swirling about the Terraces, it's fitting that the retirement home has its own theatre group, the Voices of the Terraces. The six-member troupe performs a repertoire of skits, all inspired by real-life experiences. Topics include feeling left out, losing friends to death and illness, being ignored by your children and the identity crisis that moving to a retirement home can engender.

“There was a time when I would just stare at my face in the mirror – it sounds funny but I would just stare at myself. I know that I looked like the same person but I just didn't feel the same. It was like something inside me had changed,” says “Ruth,” played Mrs. Goldstein, in a skit called “Just a Regular Person” about adjusting to life at the Terraces.

“Moving in here made me feel older, at least at first,” Jean-as-Ruth continues. “As much as I wanted it, I wish I didn't need it.”

Though it's been two years since the Goldsteins moved to the Terraces, she can relate to her character's mixed feelings.

Mrs. Goldstein has always been independent, practical and a bit daring: When her husband was fighting in the Second World War, a navigator in the Air Force, she sent him a photo of her posing in a bikini on the beach on the Toronto Islands, “so he could have his own pin-up,” she explains. The black-and-white photo hangs next to their computer now, and for the record, she was hot back in the day – and so was Mr. Goldstein, as the photo of him in uniform shows.

She knew what she was getting into when she moved to the Terraces: She had been a volunteer for Baycrest for years. She had placed many current volunteers and even some of the staff in their first jobs.

Still, adjusting to living here took some work. Mrs. Goldstein recalls stepping on to the elevator one day and being joined by an elderly man wearing nothing but an open housecoat and a disgruntled expression.

“It was not a pretty sight,” Mrs. Goldstein says, arching her eyebrows. As the elevator slowly descended, she broke the silence. “I said, ‘Oh, you forgot your slippers.'”

Experts say people need two things to adjust successfully: a sense of control and a social network, in that order. A sense of humour like Mrs. Goldstein's doesn't hurt.

“At every age and stage we want some sense of being able to influence our environment,” says Maureen Osis, a family therapist and gerontology nurse who consults on long-term care issues. “Giving people choice is a very respectful thing to do.”

From childhood on, our lives can be described as a struggle for control – over what we eat, when we sleep, what we wear, how we spend our time at work and at home, how we live and, ultimately, how we die.

Moving to a retirement home means relinquishing some of that control. The Terraces serves lunch, a convenience for which most residents are grateful; but it's at noon, whether you like it or not, and you get two entrée choices – spaghetti or boiled chicken, for instance. If you can't drive, you've got to content yourself with the entertainment options the home offers. A handful of social workers are looking over your shoulder, making sure you're happy. It's certainly possible to welcome the help and resent it at the same time.

Ms. Smyth tries to give as much control as possible to the residents, an approach that she acknowledges doesn't always come naturally for staff schooled in the nursing-home model.

“We have to honestly be prepared to share some of the power differential,” she says. “A lot of us come from health care, and health care can be pretty patronizing.”

The cafeteria test-drives recipes from residents, which is how they started serving a vegetarian version of chopped liver, which apparently tastes better than it sounds. Ms. Smyth encourages people to start their own activities if they're not interested in what's being offered. One couple, Bernard and Norma Rubin, run a Yiddish discussion group and a weekly movie night.

“I don't need to be in charge of all this stuff,” Ms. Smyth says. “They're perfectly capable adults.”

These issues of power and control require a delicate touch. The Terraces serves a primarily Jewish population, and many residents light candles on Friday nights to observe the Sabbath. Ms. Smyth has nervously suggested they might not want to leave candles burning unattended in their apartments while they go to the dining room downstairs for the Shabbat meal. The solution of some residents, to light the candles in the kitchen sink – right beneath the wooden cabinets – fails to reassure her.

Homecoming queen

Many people in their 70s and 80s are rusty at making new friends; they have grown used to the easy companionship of friends they've had for 30 or 40 years. And some are reluctant to befriend people who stand a good chance of falling ill or dying in the next few years: The average length of stay at the Terraces is only 41/2 years.

“They're afraid to bond because they're afraid they're going to lose that person,” says Ms. Lisner-Kerbel.

And people get crabby and anti-social here just like they do anywhere else. Instead of road rage, the Terraces has elevator rage: Impatient residents have been known to not-so-accidentally bump into slowpokes in the after-lunch rush, setting off a domino effect of wobbly, annoyed seniors.

But having friends is undeniably good for you. Researchers have established a firm link between strong social networks and better health.

“If you play bridge, I'm relieved,” Ms. Smyth says of new residents. “Because it takes three other people to play bridge, and I know you'll find them.”

Mrs. Goldstein plays Scrabble, and making friends didn't come as easily as she had expected. People didn't entertain much in their apartments, and striking up conversations posed a challenge. She never knew whether someone was deaf or just ignoring her.

She remembers saying “hello” one morning to a group of people and getting no response.

“They probably can't hear you,” Mr. Goldstein told her when she complained.

“Well,” she replied tartly, “they can see my mouth moving.”

But Mrs. Goldstein is nothing if not determined, so she devised a plan to find a life for herself at the retirement home. Armed with her trusty day planner, she studied the weekly schedule of events at the Terraces and attended every single program. When people asked smart questions at lectures, she would walk up and introduce herself. It took about three months for her to start feeling less new and more comfortable.

If the retirement home really were high school, Mrs. Goldstein would be the overachiever who manages to be president of the honours club, softball captain and homecoming queen. In addition to taking part in the drama group, she helps teach children to read at a local elementary school, discusses literature in a book club and current events at a weekly meeting called “Schmooze the News,” exercises in the pool, plays Scrabble and represents her floor on the residents' council.

She still volunteers at Baycrest hospital, but otherwise she tries not to do anything she's done before. “Oh no,” she says. “There's no growth to that.”

And where she found the official schedule lacking, she started her own group: Brainteasers, in which residents solve riddles and logic puzzles that Mrs. Goldstein collects from books and the Internet. (What's so fragile that you break it by saying its name?)

“With the right attitude coming in here, you can have a very good life,” Mrs. Goldstein says. (The answer, by the way, is silence.)

Now, she says, she's too busy to dwell on any doubts about moving here. She hardly notices the wheelchairs and walkers her friends use – they've become unremarkable, like eyeglasses or hair colour.

“I sort of found my niche,” she says. “My daughter says I'm a late bloomer.”

And now when she walks through the hallways, she says hello to everyone – even the ones who can't hear her. The silence, she's found, is indeed fragile.

The Terraces of Baycrest: vital statistics

187 Residents

81 Per cent female

10 Number of couples

88.2 Average age

4.4 years Average length of stay

$3,264 Monthly cost of bachelor apartment, including meals and services

Affiliation Part of Baycrest, one of the top gerontology research centres in the world

Ethnicity/religion Mostly Jewish (Baycrest was founded in 1918 as the Toronto Jewish Old Folks Home)

Nursing homes v. retirement homes

Nursing homes Government-regulated facilities for seniors with significant medical needs.

Retirement homes Unregulated; many offer some medical support and meal services, but they cater to seniors who can live independently and make their own choices.