Till death do us part or sooner: Cambridge couple forced to spend years apart in LTC homes

It’s been seven years since Cambridge’s Jim McLeod first started driving to visit his wife in a separate long-term care facility.

A lack of legislation in the province has led to McLeod driving there over 2,300 times. He sent an invoice to the Minister of Long-Term Care back in January, billing them for those trips that totalled $1,864.5, equaling about 498 hours spent driving.

At 86-years-old McLeod is unsure if he will be able to keep driving as it is getting more difficult at night or when it snows. He was able to drive to the studio for an appearance on the Mike Farwell Show Sept. 17.

“There are other folks in my building in the situation where they may not be able to drive too much longer and then it’s a question of taking two buses, 45 minutes, 50 minutes, getting connections and not everybody can afford taxis,” he said.

McLeod’s wife, Joan, was placed in a long-term care home about 25 minutes away, while McLeod lives independently at Fairview Seniors Community in Cambridge. Joan originally wanted to stay at the long-term care facility at Fairview but was forced to take a bed at Hilltop Manor.

“There are now five of us in Fairview in the same situation. If our spouses are transferred to Fairview their rooms in Cambridge become available. So, we’re not taking an extra room and I have mentioned that now to five long-term care ministers,” said McLeod.

The senior couple has been married for 66-years. Their story is some of the reason why Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife introduced Bill 21 or the Till Death Do Us Part Act. That bill has been brought to Queen’s Park three times since 2019.

That bill would ensure couples in their golden years get to stick together.

McLeod was joined by Fife on the Mike Farwell Show to chat about the negative impacts’ seniors like McLeod experience from driving to visit their life partner on an almost daily basis.

“They’ve spent their lives with their partners, they have paid their taxes they have built this province up. It’s not until they came to need long-term care or assisted living or a care campus that they realize how broken the system is in Ontario,” the Waterloo MPP said.

Fife and her team are working with a researcher out of Queen’s University to study the impacts of senior couples being separated.

“When partners like Jim and Joan are separated there is a negative impact on their health, they are in crisis, it is mental and emotional labour for them as a couple,” mentioned Fife.

“If the system was working that wouldn’t be happening. And we would be having proactive not reactive responses to a spousal reunification.”