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The retired judge is in fine voice today. “The last several weekends, I can tell you the meals we had were not fit for human consumption,” he bellows. “Even the plates on the tables are wrong!”
“Hear, hear,” a grey-haired woman at another table says. Then she snaps, “Sit down already,” at a woman who is gingerly lowering herself into a chair.
“I'm sitting, shut up!” the woman snaps back.
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Heather Lisner-Kerbel, the social worker who called this meeting to talk about food at the Terraces of Baycrest retirement home, doesn't flinch.
The judge “has the floor now and he's making a lot of sense,” she says. “Everyone will have a chance to talk.”
And talk they do, complaining bitterly about everything from the seasonings to the serving staff's lack of finesse. They egg each other on, cheering each time someone scores rhetorical points against their common enemy: lunch.
“Every day the boiled chicken,” one woman grumbles. “We've got it coming out of our ears!”
“A piece of fish!” another rasps in heavily accented English. “Fish for the elderly – it is good for the brain, for everything.”
“Not fried, for God's sake,” a third resident chimes in.
If you want to rile up a group of retirement home residents, mention the food – and then stand back. Most people move to the Terraces in north Toronto for the reliable medical care, not the daily meal, but they never tire of complaining about it. Food replaces the weather as the go-to conversation starter, and just like the weather it prompts complaints regardless of whether it's too hot or too cold.
And it's not just an issue at the Terraces.
“The food might be good, but that's not the point,” says Christine Lever, a Toronto-based long-term care consultant who works with families to help place relatives in retirement and nursing homes. “Institutional food is different from the food you cooked in your own kitchen … nobody makes pasta the way mama makes pasta.”
What rankles the residents is not just the mushy spaghetti or the bland chicken; it's what the food represents. At the Terraces, as at most retirement homes, more than 80 per cent of the residents are women who for years were the ones responsible for family meals. They celebrated holidays with their grandmothers' recipes and baked comfort foods for their children. Food was more than nourishment; it was their responsibility, their creative outlet and a physical manifestation of their love.
“These were my mother's candlesticks,” 96-year-old Rebecca Hoch says, as she lights two candles on Friday night to mark the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, the way she did for decades in her own home. Her late husband always said a blessing over the wine and her two sons, and they would all eat the traditional meals she prepared. “It was a lovely feeling,” she says.
When the food fails to live up to residents' expectations, it becomes a canvas for larger, unspoken anxieties.
“It's a control thing,” Ms. Lisner-Kerbel explains. “It's something so much a part of their lives, that they were in charge of. When someone comes into your home, it's like, ‘When do you want to eat?'”
The Terraces serves a primarily Jewish population for whom food plays a particularly important role in family life and culture. Trying to escape from a resident's apartment at tea time without eating something is taking your life in your hands.
But in a way, getting outraged about the meals, and then getting over it, is a rite of passage for new residents.
When Lawrence Sandy moved to the retirement home five years ago, it bothered him when the waitresses would pass dishes over his head instead of walking around to each seat. They would slap down dessert when he wasn't even finished with the entrée. He joined the food committee and raised a fuss.
The management at the Terraces says it tries to respond to residents' concerns but often has to settle for small changes or tradeoffs because of budget constraints. The dining room did stop serving hot dogs because of complaints (“tasted like wood” is one representative comment), and the food committee was able to get roast beef served once a week in exchange for giving up pop once a week.
