“I’m not a dumbbell.”
With that declaration, Ruth Margolese is putting a big Toronto-based corporation on notice that she is not to be patronized or trifled with just because she is of a certain age and lives in a seniors home.
She is fighting the planned closure of the Castel Royal Retirement Residence in Côte St. Luc on the grounds that it is wrong to turf out frail elderly people from their homes. What’s more, she believes she has a legal case and not only a moral argument.
The fact that Margolese is 100 is not stopping her. She has filed a complaint with Quebec’s rental board and is scheduled to go before it on July 14.
The centenarian has, unlike many fellow tenants, full command of her faculties, knows her rights and, she said, is not afraid to speak up.
“I’m not wishy-washy. I will fight,” she said. “I’m determined to keep this place open… I want to be the fly in the ointment.”
In May, Chartwell, the owners of the Castel, announced that the residence would cease operations one year from then.
At the time, the 250-unit highrise on Cavendish Boulevard had approximately 171 residents. The management said the main reason was the deteriorating condition of the building. The plumbing has been a particular problem – there were four floods this past winter alone.
READ: ANOTHER KOSHER SENIORS’ RESIDENCE TO CLOSE IN MONTREAL
It will be the second private kosher seniors residence to be shuttered in Côte St. Luc, following the Manoir Montefiore, which closed this past winter. Many of the Montefiore residents were transferred to another kosher residence of similar quality in Côte St. Luc, Le Waldorf, which has the same owner, Réseau Sélection. The transition from the Castel may not be as easy.
Margolese, a widow for almost 30 years, has lived at the Castel for six years. She had been living in Côte St. Luc, in her own house, since 1955 and reluctantly gave it up at the urging of her children. Two are in Toronto, one in Baltimore. Staying in Côte St. Luc was important to her, and a facility that is kosher and follows Jewish tradition a must. At the Castel, she receives lunch and dinner daily, and enjoys many structured activities and twice weekly shopping outings by adapted bus. CLSC workers make breakfast and help her dress each day, and give her a bath twice a week.
She had a heart valve replacement three years ago, but is otherwise quite well. She gets around with a walker.
Her fellow residents have become “like a family.”
“I feel they can’t do this to senior citizens,” she said, sitting at the dining room table of her comfortable two-bedroom apartment. “They have an obligation to us.”
Margolese is disappointed that she has had to take on this battle herself. “Where is the Jewish community? Have they nothing to say?” she asks.
She points out that three weeks before Chartwell announced the closure, she signed a lease for one year. She also observed that new residents were being accepted in the weeks leading up to the announcement.
“How can they just break my lease?” she wants to know. Margolese can’t understand how a building that’s only about 40 years old could have such serious structural problems. “Why didn’t they start with renovating the plumbing first rather than fixing up the lobby so things look good?”
Margolese has assigned her nephew, Bruce Margolese, to represent her before the Régie du logement on July 14, but she intends to be there, too. “He’s not a lawyer, but he’s a smart cookie – like his aunt.”
A recent hospital stay and calls from Chartwell’s lawyer have not deterred her from going ahead with her petition.
Moving people at this age and in a fragile condition is traumatic, she said. “People are frightened and confused, they don’t know where they will go.”
Fear is not an emotion she is experiencing, even though her future is equally uncertain. “I’m not afraid of anything… Only the man upstairs,” she says, pointing heavenward.
Margolese sees her choices as limited, the most likely option being the King David, another kosher residence in Côte St. Luc, but it provides only one meal a day and she does not like having to downsize to one bedroom. Her family frequently visits, and she likes the spare bedroom. (Margolese is a great-grandmother of 40 – with two more expected this month – and she can rhyme off all of them.)
“And who’s to say [the King David] has the space for me?” wonders Margolese (née Frankel) who was born in Toronto and came to Montreal at age two. She always worked, even while raising a family and looking after her in-laws.
“I was a jack-of-all-trades.” She made artificial flowers of fabric and blown glass and worked for a cleaning company and a bakery.
Chartwell, which bought the Castel 10 years ago, is helping residents find new accommodation and is covering their moving costs. Margolese said she has been offered a reimbursement of three months’ rent, but points out that will amount to less than one-third of the $3,600 she pays, because extra services above basic accommodation will be deducted.
“If I am wrong on this, you have to show me the proof, and I will compromise. Whatever the rental board decides, I will abide by,” Margolese stated.
READ: B’NAI BRITH LAUNCHES $26-MILLION SENIORS RESIDENCE PROJECT
The greater lesson in all this, she believes, is that society should have more respect for the elderly.
“We’re not all gone once we reach a certain age, and people think they can do whatever they want with us,” she affirms. “I still have a mind, and I’m going to use it.”