The Unretirement: The greyforce isn't leaving the workforce and it's not about money

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And that's good for everyoneLast updated 18 minutes ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Dr. Parminder Raina, who studies aging, enjoys mentoring younger colleagues. "Loneliness is deadly," says Raina, who is in his 60s. Photo by Peter J Thompson/National PostFreedom 55 was an idea for an insurance and financial services company, not the kind of business known for snappy, memorable advertising campaigns. But introduced in 1984 for London Life, the slogan soon became as popular as Nike’s “Just Do It”, Rice Krispies’ “Snap, Crackle, Pop” and Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?”Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorThere was just one wrinkle. The short and simple pitch was intended to get people thinking about their retirement years and the role of RRSPs in financial planning, which had yet to be fully embraced by Canadians. It wasn’t meant to be taken literally, says former London Life senior VP of marketing Alf Goodall, who was told when he joined the insurer in the late 1990s that people had turned up at the company’s offices to sign up on the spot to retire a good decade earlier than usual. Alf Goodall, shown at his home in London, Ont., was ‘retired’ from London Life where he worked on the Freedom 55 marketing campaign. At 62, he is living his dream, running a landscaping contracting business. Photo by Peter J Thompson/National PostSo, nearly two decades after the slogan was introduced, Goodall and his marketing team were tasked with redefining Freedom 55 for a new generation.Curated longreads and features from top journalists across Canada, delivered Saturdays.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Long Story will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again“They wanted to refresh the idea that Freedom 55 was about having confidence that the future was brighter, and that we could have the flexibility to design our retirement in the way we wanted it to be,” says Goodall. While not entirely “retiring” the term Freedom 55, there was less emphasis on retirement as an ideal, and more on exploring what financial freedom meant to people, and how it could help them realize their dreams.Goodall, among the youngest of the baby boomers, knew his audience well when London Life relaunched its new ad campaign in 2012. The eldest of his cohort, born between 1946 and 1965, had passed the 65-year milestone, and they were already making noises that totally abandoning work life wasn’t the goal anymore.“They had a different idea about what they wanted,” recalls Goodall. Throughout their lives, boomers had redefined so many aspects of society, and now they were redefining retirement. They were rejecting the way their parents had retired and had little interest in a life filled with leisurely trips, playing bridge and gardening.Goodall himself took the marketing slogan to heart, finding his own path to freedom. After London Life joined with two other insurance companies, he was “retired,” as he calls it. Then after a short stint with another insurance company, he was again “retired,” this time at age 56. That’s when he took the opportunity to realize a long-held dream of a career as far away from a desk as one could get — running a landscape contracting business.“I wanted to be outside, and I wanted to work with my hands,” says Goodall, who is approaching his 62nd birthday. “It’s the most fulfilling, satisfying time of my life right now,” he notes, adding that the combination of being the boss and working about 30 hours a week leaves him time to spend with his elderly parents, his wife Lynne (who followed her own dream to become an interior designer after working at London Life), and their adult children.“As long as I have good health and can make a meaningful contribution, I will be here.”It’s a post-work lifestyle choice some have coined “unretirement” or even “the new retirement,” although the term is taking some time to catch on. Type “unretirement” into Google and up pops thousands of references to NFL legend Tom Brady’s attempts to reverse his 2023 retirement from the game, at age 44. William Shatner, shown at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo in April 2026, is going strong at 95. Photo by Brent Calver/Postmedia NewsSoon, though, it will be synonymous with the 65-plus crowd, who now number about eight million persons in Canada, and for the first time in history, outnumber those aged 14 and under. Compounding the equation are the gen-Xers, the seven million-plus Canadians born between 1965 and 1979, who are turning 60 and undoubtedly thinking about their own post-work lives.“The overarching theme is that our population is continuing to age and we will continue to keep aging forward,” says Nathanael Lauster, a demographer and associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia. “The numbers of people over the age of 65 will keep rapidly climbing until 2030.”What will this world look like for older Canadians who once just assumed that, if they were lucky, by age 65 they’d be saying goodbye forever to office supply requisitions and team meetings? And what does this all mean for younger Canadians who have years or decades still left in their careers? Will these older workers, the best educated of any generation that has come before, clog up the career ladder? Or is it a boon for society to have their wealth of expertise and institutional knowledge around for a little longer?Many such questions are already being answered by a host of aging experts, economists, demographers, scientists and sociologists. And there’s strong evidence it’ll be a good thing for everyone that the “greyforce” will still be in the workforce, in one form or another, for some time to come.Not all of them will be there willingly. The latest StatCan numbers reveal that the labour force participation rate of Canadians 65 and older rose to a record 15.2 per cent in 2025, the highest in a half century. Half of those 1.2 million Canadians working or looking for work are doing so just to stay above the poverty line. The remaining half, many of them working part-time or flexible hours, were still working because they chose to.Granted, many Canadians will keep working due to financial pressures or retire early due to poor health, but a growing number are realizing they might have decades of healthy, vibrant life still ahead, and want to keep one foot in the work world or find some other meaningful pursuit.For them, it’s more about “stimulation, not hibernation,” as cultural historian Lawrence Samuel described it in a recent Psychology Today article. “The emerging model approaches one’s post-career phase of a life as a new chapter,” wrote Samuel, “rather than an epilogue to the main story.” Madonna, 67, attended the 2026 Met Gala in New York City in May 2026, just a few weeks after she appeared at Coachella wearing the corset she first wore to the festival almost two decades earlier. Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty ImagesWhether they re-enter the workforce after a brief time away, start a new career like Alf Goodall or plunge into some other meaningful pursuit, today’s older Canadians have more than their fair share of role models to bolster their new “hell no, we won’t go” defiance. William Shatner, 95, Mick Jagger, 82, and Bruce Springsteen, 76, are still touring and performing, while 67-year-old Madonna made an appearance this past April at Coachella in a corset she had donned 20 years earlier at the same festival, and she’s also set to perform in the FIFA World Cup final’s half-time show.Other older idols have taken over the small and big screens. At 83, Harrison Ford portrays a divorced therapist with a busy love life in the Apple sitcom Shrinking; 74-year-old Jean Smart’s character Deborah Vance had a fling with a twenty-something rock star in a recent episode of her hit Crave series Hacks; and in the Disney Plus series Only Murders in the Building, 76-year-old Martin Short and 80-year-old Steve Martin head up a cast of lively older tenants in a Manhattan apartment block. Meryl Streep, 76, is doing another star turn in The Devil Wears Prada 2; and Tom Cruise, who’ll turn 64 this summer, is filming a new movie where he’s reportedly once again doing his own stunts.When Freedom 55 first entered the cultural lexicon four decades ago, average life expectancy in Canada was just over 76 years, combined for men and women; today, it’s almost a full seven more years at 82.2 years, combined (84.3 years for women, 80.3 years for men). Longevity scientists predict this number will increase even more over the next few decades for high-income nations. In other words, the so-called retirement years could eventually span nearly half our lives.In a recent report entitled Four Pillars of the New Retirement, by financial services firm Edward Jones and Age Wave, a consulting firm specializing in aging-related issues, more than 50 per cent of Canadian respondents said they were approaching their retirement as a “new chapter in life,” where a mix of work and leisure was preferable to one of just leisure.We don’t retire the same way our grandparents did.Another report had similar findings for its American respondents, with one-in-eight retirees saying they planned to go back to work, and 56 per cent saying they stayed in the workplace because they “enjoyed working.”“We don’t retire the same way our grandparents did,” says Anthony Quinn, president of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP). He notes that for some, retirement is a dirty word. “It means to step back, to withdraw,” he says. “Retirement is now a transition, not a full stop.”Lauster, the UBC demographer, agrees this demographic doesn’t always behave the same way those who came before did. “For a long time, people who did planning thought seniors were going to be downsizing, and they aren’t in enough numbers,” he says.Not only are they holding on to their homes, but this new kind of older Canadian isn’t content to sit still at home. Sales of RVs, a longtime favourite of the retired, have been exploding: in 2023, sales in Canada reached a record $640 million. And instead of downsizing their vehicles, seniors are a major demographic for luxury car purchases.While Roman emperor Augustus Caesar offered pensions to Roman legionnaires in the 13th century, there was little in the way of financial support for older workers until German chancellor Otto von Bismarck came on the scene. In 1881, he put forth a set of bills that would later become law, providing financial support for older citizens no longer able to work, to kick in at age 70 (in a country with an average life expectancy of 45). Still, it was a revolutionary idea, wrote Sarah Laskow in a 2014 Atlantic article. “Because back then, people simply did not retire … if you were alive, you worked.”Canada unveiled the first federal old-age pension program in 1927. In the U.S., the idea of retirement took root when president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the U.S. Social Security Act in 1935. By 1965, Canada had the Canadian Pension Plan, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for those under the poverty line.By the mid-20th century, leaving the workforce by age 65 was a given for all workers, whether they liked it or not. “For many retirees, retirement was less a choice than a necessity because many firms had compulsory retirement policies that forced workers to leave the job at a certain age,” wrote James Chappel in his 2024 book Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age.In 1986, the United States ended mandatory retirement, but it would take until the early 2000s before Canada also gave it the pink slip.When the first of the baby boomers entered middle age in the 1980s, Canadians were already beginning to question traditional assumptions and expectations around growing older and retirement. Organizations like the American Association of Retired Persons and CARP in Canada became leading advocates, providing advice, support and influencing public policy.Their support emboldened people like then-63-year-old Solange Denis, who in 1985 famously said to then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, on the front lawn of the Parliament buildings, that if he went ahead and indexed the old-age pension it would be “Goodbye Charlie Brown” to his government. The clawbacks eventually came, but not until 1989.Janice McTighe was already mid-career and in midlife when these 1980s developments were taking place. Today, at 85, she is still actively involved with Renfrew Educational Services in Calgary, an organization she founded in 1974 to help children with physical and cognitive special needs. “I hate the word retirement,” says McTighe. “I’m pretty healthy still, I’m pretty active and I just need to keep my brain active and busy,” she says of her role as strategic adviser (she recently stepped back from her executive director role), which has her working about 30 hours a week, about half what she used to do.“I see some people lose a bit of themselves when they retire. It’s different for everybody, and you should be able to live the way you want,” says McTighe, adding she still makes time for travel and gardening at her B.C. cottage. “I’m doing exactly what I want to do.” At 85, Calgary’s Janice McTighe still works about 30 hours a week with Renfrew Educational Services, the organization she founded in 1974 to help children with physical and cognitive special needs. Photo by Gavin Young/Postmedia NewsDr. Parminda Raina gives active seniors like McTighe two thumbs up. “You should do whatever is the right thing for you,” says the McMaster University professor and scientific director of the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging. “We are learning that having a sense of purpose and staying engaged with others is as important as any other lifestyle factor.”Raina is also the lead principal investigator on the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. That study, which began in 2011, follows 50,000 people between the ages of 45 and 85 at its start, collecting information every three years until 2033 to better understand what role genetics, physical health, social and environmental factors play in aging. Its preliminary findings contradict the long-held belief that genetics are everything. “It actually accounts for only about 25 per cent of our longevity,” says Raina.As physically healthier Canadians show up in bigger numbers, they’re also changing the nature of sport and leisure. Pickleball has taken the continent by storm and skews to older ages. Masters swim clubs are filled with lightning-fast silver-haired swimmers, and marathons are no longer only for the young and arthritis-free.Take Diana Nyad, 76, for example, who says that she’s in even better shape today than in 2013 when, as a youthful 64-year-old, she became the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without the protection of a shark cage. Or 80-year-old Joan MacDonald, a former driving instructor from Collingwood, Ont., who took up weight training in her 70s — her Trainwithjoan Instagram account has 2.3 million followers. Calgary marathoner Gerry Miller, 88, has completed more than 40 marathons since taking up the sport at age 58. British actor Helen Mirren attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe in Beverly Hills in 2024. At 80, she walked the catwalk for L’Oreal Paris. Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesWe’re seeing 55-plus models on the catwalk, and a bevy of healthy and vibrant seniors market the tsunami of products and services that have sprung up to cater to this older consumer. Of course, some are focused on the elusive goal of anti-aging. At 80, British actor Helen Mirren recently walked the L’Oreal Paris catwalk, leading Good Housekeeping Magazine to gush that “ageless beauty is as fashionable as ever.”While some applaud the blasting of stereotypes about aging and beauty, others criticize it for keeping the pressure on to look gorgeous and youthful right to our graves. “One of the greatest achievements of the 20th century and beyond has been extending longevity. One of its biggest failures is how to reconcile that with the fact no one wants to get old — except for the alternative. We want to live longer, but we don’t want to age,” Susan Douglas, a University of Michigan professor, told a recent conference on aging.Raina, who is in his 60s, says that while aging is not without its physical issues, even a moderate level of physical activity can slow down such inevitabilities as loss of muscle mass. “As we get older, we want to make sure we don’t believe our bodies are giving up,” he says. Beyond regular exercise and a balanced diet, he also stresses staying engaged. “I love what I do, and mentoring my younger colleagues gives me a tremendous amount of joy.”A recent study by researchers at the University of California Davis found that older adults who describe “having a sense of purpose” had a significantly reduced chance of developing cognitive impairment and dementia as they aged.But finding that purpose usually means interacting with others, something that can be a barrier for those in their retirement years. According to a 2024 NIA Ageing in Canada survey, social well-being is vital to healthy aging. However, only about 32 per cent of those over the age of 50 surveyed said they have strong social networks.“Loneliness is deadly,” says Raina. During our working lives, “so much of our social network is through work,” he says. “If you don’t create proper structures regarding what purpose you have now, it’s going to have a negative impact on your health and well-being.“It can be by working, but it doesn’t have to be,” Raina says. “It can also be taking care of your grandchildren or volunteering in your community.” In other words, the choice of purpose or social connection is unique to the individual.Raina’s findings bolster earlier studies showing the importance of social connections to health and longevity. The Blue Zones study, an ongoing project looking at regions where a high concentration of people live to 100 and beyond, found that healthy lifestyle habits weren’t just about exercise and diet, but also a sense of belonging, being part of a community and having a sense of purpose. On the island of Okinawa, Japan, which has one of the longest disability-free life expectancies in the world, there isn’t even a word for retirement. Instead, that society celebrates “Ikigai,” loosely translated as “a life worth living,” as the goal for people at every stage in life. They also follow the practice of Moia, social groups in which children are paired with other children of the same age, those supportive relationships helping to stave off loneliness at every stage of their life. “The most important organ you have is your brain, and if you don’t work it, it’ll atrophy,” says Saskatchewan entrepreneur Gerry Darichuk, 78, a busy volunteer who also advises startups. Photo by Brent Calver/Postmedia NewsIn North America, our workplaces have served that role for the better part of the last century, says Rachel Margolis, a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario. “The boomers are the last generation where a good chunk of them worked for just one employer or a small number of employers,” Margolis says.“That’s not always such a positive thing for people’s lives afterwards,” she notes. “We need different types of people around to help us stay sharp, so that is something people should consider as part of a retirement plan.”Margolis’ views are backed up by such recent studies as the aforementioned Four Pillars of The New Retirement. It found that when asked what they missed most about working, more than 39 per cent said it was the people and social stimulation, while only 22 per cent said it was the money.Gerry Darichuk can attest to the joy of staying engaged and having a purpose in one’s post-work years. The Saskatchewan native spent much of his free time volunteering while he built his manufacturing company in Airdrie, Alta. Today, his four sons run the day-to-day business for the company, while the 78-year-old jets off regularly to places like Uganda, where he oversaw the building of a school, and Ukraine, where he has been helping to get medical equipment to the frontlines. The entrepreneur also gives his time as an adviser to two local startups.“The most important organ you have is your brain, and if you don’t work it, it’ll atrophy,” says Darichuk, who can’t imagine pursuing a life made up solely of leisure. “I like golfing, but after a few holes I get tired of it.”Despite all the positive news about how we’re living longer and healthier, older Canadians have an enemy that’s almost as damaging as loneliness: ageism.Remember when TV journalist Lisa LaFlamme was unceremoniously ousted from her anchor role on CTV News in 2022, ostensibly because the then-58-year-old decided to let her grey hair grow out? Then there was the “OK Boomer” meme in 2019 that ended up on T-shirts and hoodies across North America. In a New York Times article in the midst of the craze, tech columnist Taylor Lorenz wrote that it was “the end of friendly generational relations,” with gen Z finally getting its revenge on the demographic it blames, sometimes rightly, for everything from an affordability gap and political polarization to the climate crisis and a health-care system bursting at the seams.While some of the backlash from younger generations may be warranted, others see it as ageism. The World Health Organization describes ageism, which can happen at all stages of life but especially for older people, as a scourge that can have deleterious effects on an older person’s health, well-being and longevity. Even 62 per cent of health-care workers, in a recent global survey conducted by the World Alzheimer Report 2019, falsely believed that developing dementia is a normal part of aging (the same study found 80 per cent of the general population held this belief).Ageism can lead to negative self-perception, which scholars like Becca Levy at Yale University have shown to have a direct impact on mental and physical health. Fortunately, Levy’s more recent studies are showing that older people can be trained to see themselves in a more positive light, which can literally add years to their lives.CARP’s Anthony Quinn sees ageism, what he calls the “last acceptable form of discrimination,” alive and well in the workplace, where practices like mandatory retirement have been replaced by exit packages enticing older workers to leave. “You get two years’ severance, and it sounds like a lottery win,” he says. “You have maybe another 25 years of life, and now you can’t get back into the workplace.”Combatting some of the myths about older workers needing to make way for the generations behind them can go a long way to better understanding. According to a recent StatCan report , the mass retirement of baby boomers, and gen-Xers on their heels, threatens to create a historic labour shortage in this country. Supporting those who want to continue working, or move to part-time work or phased retirement would help address the problem while also putting less strain on social security programs. “You can travel the world and golf every day, but at a certain point travelling costs too much money, and you might find that golfing every single day is boring,” says Calgary’s Kim McConnell, the 69-year-old chair of the Top 7 Over 70 Canada. Photo by Top 7 Over 70“(Older people) contribute substantially to the economic well-being of a country,” says McMaster’s Raina. And while some do require social services such as full-time or long-term health care, he says the vast majority live independently, in their own homes and communities. “They also provide a high amount of volunteer work in their communities.”That community contribution is needed now more than ever. Over the past few years, volunteerism in Canada has experienced a notable drop in numbers, with the greatest decrease seen in women and young adults aged 25 to 34, according to StatCan.As a dedicated volunteer, Kim McConnell is doing his part, while at the same time making big waves in fighting ageism. As the chair of the Top 7 Over 70 Canada. McConnell is helping to expand an initiative that began in Calgary in 2018 by businessman and philanthropist Jim Gray. Described as both a movement and an awards program, the non-profit organization celebrates the community contributions of seniors. Both Janice McTighe and Gerry Darichuk have been recipients. “This is a program that stimulates volunteerism,” says McConnell. “When you retire, you’re going to want to do something,” says the 69-year-old Calgarian. “You can travel the world and golf every day, but at a certain point travelling costs too much money, and you might find that golfing every single day is boring.”In his 2012 book The Big Shift: Navigating The New Stage Beyond Midlife, author Marc Freedman foresaw the unretirement trend and its attendant benefits for all of society: “Never before have so many people had so much experience and the time and the capacity to do something significant with it… that’s the gift of longevity, the great potential payoff on all the progress we’ve made expanding lives.”Author Chris Farrell also sees great possibilities. “The potential economic payoff from society tapping into the abilities and knowledge of large numbers of people in their sixties and seventies is enormous,” he wrote in his 2019 book Purpose and a Paycheck: Finding Meaning, Money and Happiness in the Second Half of Life. “The economy will expand, household finances will improve, and fears of a penurious retirement will fade.”For people like Alf Goodall, Freedom 55 has taken on new meaning as he heads into life’s next act. “I understand that not all people are able to do what I’m doing or would want to,” he says, adding how one chooses to spend their later years should be a personal choice — the freedom to make one’s own way in the world.“Some people think I’m crazy,” he says with a laugh. “But we have a lot to give and a lot to get. I’d say to people, don’t be scared, don’t stay in the rocking chair if that’s not where you want to be.” Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.