The Times Colonist
March 14, 2004
Jim Gibson
Baby boomers never die, they just reinvent themselves. For the vanguard of 7.3 million due to retire over the next 20 years, life is about work and dreams.
Victoria's Marnie Crowe and Gabriola Island's Fred Greater could be poster children for the newly retired. They are among those setting the trend expected to be embraced by the 7.3 million baby boomers to follow over the next two decades.
No "gone fishin’ " or knitting on the porch for them.
They're both back at work.
In Crowe's case, it was almost the day after she retired at 65 last spring from the University of Victoria's theatre department.
She hung out her garden design business shingle, and now is calculating just what that means to her 2003 tax return.
A former Toronto Dominion bank manager, Greater, 60, retired in his mid-50s, caught up in the downsizing tsunami that swept through banking's middle management.
A hobby woodworker, he converted the family's Gabriola recreational property into a permanent residence, a retirement exercise requiring frequent supply runs to Nanaimo's Home Depot store. He now works there weekends helping other do-it-your-selfers. Unlike his bank job, he has no sales goals to hit or responsibilities for anyone but himself.
"What's not to like? I get to play with tools," says the outgoing Greater, happily working for a few dollars more than minimum wage.
He's not alone in age or circumstance at his sales job. In his department are a former RCMP staff sergeant, a former assistant fire chief, and several ex-realtors.
If Crowe and Greater are the poster children for back-to-work retirement then Prime Minister Paul Martin, 65, is the cover story of the year for the scrap mandatory-retirement movement.
In a year-end CBC interview, Martin questioned whether retirement at 65 is logical at a time when society is growing older, pension funds are threatened,