Interview with Berwick Royal Oak resident, Joseph Artibise

I’ve lived at Berwick Royal Oak just a little over two years now, and I really like it. The activities, the location, the food, the people inside, the staff, and the residents make it all very positive. I find our life after we moved in has become more relaxed but more active than it was previously. Of course, just previously was COVID, so things were pretty slow for a lot of people.

I certainly love the entertainment we have. We have lots of different musical acts and entertainment happening. I sing in the choir, so I enjoy the choir very much. Daily, of course, we use both exercises and, because we’re located right beside a park, we go for walks outside daily. So you’re getting both a good workout and fresh air, and that’s lovely.

The level of amenities at Berwick Royal Oak compared to other communities that I’ve seen is a big positive.

We’ve got three eating establishments, which really is an important part of your day. You can go to the main dining room, or we can go to a bistro, or we can go to a pub. So you get different meals and a different atmosphere. That really makes it nice for a day where you’re saying, "Oh, I want a lovely sit-down served dinner," or "No, today I’m a little bit in a rush, I think I’ll just get a sandwich and go to the bistro and then head out," or "I’ve got friends over, let’s go have a beer and sit in the pub and have a sandwich." Those are big positives for us that we really didn’t appreciate enough before we moved in, but since we’ve moved in, we’ve really enjoyed them fully.

I think it’s a very active and upbeat community. The people are certainly willing to talk all the time, and we visit. I notice when you go into the dining room, it’s actually fairly noisy because people are talking and enjoying themselves. There are often people sitting in the coffee shop and stopping by, visiting, and talking with each other. So it is a very engaged community.

When there are activities happening, people really participate. If we do a bus outing, often the bus is sold out, so to speak, where it’s full, and people sign up ahead of time. That makes it quite enjoyable.

The staff are extremely friendly and quickly learn your names, so they engage with you. We have a very young staff — they’ve recruited from schools and local colleges — in our dining room, and they are just a joy every day to see. They learn their skills quickly, but they also engage with all of us.

We looked around at several different communities in the Greater Victoria area. We chose this one because of several things. First of all, we were very pleased that it’s family-owned and operated, which gives more flexibility and more response to what the residents need and want. We loved the suites that were offered, and we feel very happy in the suite we ended up with. We came and visited, and the residents were very friendly and engaging, and the food was excellent.

One of the things I learned when I was looking around at other places was that I’d always look for their activity schedule, and it always looked impressive because there were so many activities every day. Then I started looking at the activities and what I would do, and I found that in an awful lot of the other communities, the activities were very passive, in the sense that you can go play cards in the afternoon. But it wasn’t led by active living personnel. It wasn’t engaging. At Berwick Royal Oak, most of the activities are in fact led by an active living person, so you get more variety, more things happening, and more participation as a result.

The process of moving in was actually quite painless. It was a few very busy and tiring days as you’re going through the process, but they gave us a lot of information up front that would help us about what we were going to need specifically for the move-in, right down to the length of the shower curtain to make sure we had one that reaches far enough so it’s not going to leak water out of it.

On the day of the move-in, they would deliver your meals to your suite if you felt that was easier to deal with. They provided help organizing your movers and recommended movers that would be suitable. I thought that was all very helpful and made it painless. In the end, it was just tiring, but that’s for everybody.

That transition happened fairly quickly. We were still clearing out our old home that we had sold, so we had a busy month to six weeks of back and forth, just doing the last final things there. But it was right after that, when the next month of activities came out, that we started to sign up for activities and participate. By the end of that time, we were feeling very comfortable. We’d go out shopping or something like that and say, "Okay, ready to go home," when home was Berwick Royal Oak. There wasn’t any doubt in our minds that it was anywhere else.

I think you would be very happy in a community like this if you’re looking for activities, participation, and belonging. Everyone has their own suite that they can go back to after lunch if they want to have a nap or whatever. But there are lots of activities happening, whether it be cards, Poker, choir, or going for walks or outings on the bus. Take a look at what activities you want to do, and don’t limit yourself.

Don’t be so focused on needing a bigger suite or an extra den or an extra bedroom. Honestly, you’ve got the whole building to live in, so you only need to meet your basics, whatever your bottom line is. Living there and waiting another year to get the perfect suite means you’ve missed a year of opportunity to really be enjoying life. I wouldn’t wait too long. Once you’ve made that decision, get the move-in going, and you’ll be happy with it within a month after moving in, in my opinion.

I can’t say that I’ve really encountered any challenges other than we have several friends that we also do other activities that aren’t in the community. The challenge is often trying to schedule those activities because there are other things happening in the Berwick community as well, and so we’re balancing schedules, which is a funny thing. Who knew retirement would be so busy?

I don’t think I would do anything different. We were very deliberate in our process. We went through, and we looked at other places. We made the decision to move there. In fact, after we had kind of made that decision, we moved it up by six months from the timeline we had in our mind. We started to say, you know, we really want to be in a place that’s active and things are happening and things are offered to us. So we enjoyed it, and I don’t think we would change anything.

You have to decide what level of activity you want. There are some people who do not want activity levels. They just want a place to live and enjoy their meals, and that’s fine. But if you want an engaged community where you know the people around you and you participate in activities, look for that.

Once you find it, don’t wait too long. So many people that we run into have waited and said, oh, I’m not ready, I need another five years. My goodness. If you’re making a decision on moving five years from now, I think you’re missing a lot in your life now. Obviously, that’s not for everybody, but I really think that a lot of people wait too long because they’re waiting for either the perfect situation or for some crisis to happen. When a crisis happens, that’s not the time you should be moving. You should have done that move ahead of time.