Interview with Greystone Manor Retirement Residence management, Cheryl Noble

I love working with the seniors. To the point where it’s become my passion. I love their stories. They have such a great history, such great stories. I like the interaction. I spend a lot of time with residents. A very wise man once told me that working in a building like this is 80% residents and 20% paperwork. So I can do that.

We have such a good camaraderie between our staff and the residents. We try to make sure that this is their home, not a place that they’re staying. We believe that we, the staff, are guests in their home, and we treat them as such.

It’s been a long journey. I used to work in intensive care nursing at Foothills Hospital in Calgary. Then my husband and I owned a restaurant, and I also worked as a sales rep for Calgary Wheelchair in Calgary. When they were looking for somebody to be the GM, they took a look at my resume and thought she’s got marketing, nursing background, and restaurant background, which of course matters because food is a big thing for our residents.

It was just a perfect storm. It worked out really well. It was my ideal job. I’ve been there 13 years now. I really like the idea of making a connection with our seniors and learning all about them. They still have a lot to offer, and I think that’s what probably drew me to working with them. Their wealth of knowledge and their personalities.

The number one thing is when people come in and see that we have a washer and dryer in each suite. That really gets their attention. We also do a lot of big events and invite seniors in the community to come and join us. The events are always tied in with food, and we have two Red Seal chefs in the kitchen, as well as several cooks, who put out amazing buffets.

The senior community comes in, has a beautiful dinner, has entertainment, and it just makes them think about Greystone when the time comes for them to think about moving into an independent living building.

We give our space in the common areas to community service groups that are looking to have meetings or a luncheon. We very happily invite them into Greystone and let them use our space. We do a lot for the food bank. We do a food bank drive we call Fill the Bus, and we keep a box there. Our residents are very generous, and we take donations into the food bank at least once every two or three weeks. We like to give back.

When you move into an independent building like this, it’s like coming into your own apartment. You come and go as you please. You do what you want. We just offer services. We offer housekeeping. We offer food, two meals a day, plus tea at tea time. But they pretty much come and go as they please.

A lot of residents at Greystone choose to stay in the building during the day because Michelle, who is our recreation director, has something going on all the time. They’re busy, busy, busy if they want to be. She’s always thinking about something new, something different. We do bingo, chair exercises, chair dancing, yoga, cards, poker, Mexican train, and mahjong. She’s got them doing all kinds of stuff.

I love Jordy’s stuffed chicken breast. It’s amazing. He puts cream cheese and spinach and a little bit of crab. It’s very good.

Our chef, Jody, follows the Canada Food Guide. He offers a wide variety of food. We always have five entrée choices every night. There are two main ones, and then three alternatives that you can order. You don’t have to pre-order them. You just come down, like a restaurant, sit down in the dining room, and order what you’d like to have.

He really likes to use local, fresh, in-season items, so he doesn’t really like canned stuff or powdered stuff. He’s not really high on frozen stuff. Everything he would prefer to be fresh. He builds everything from scratch. Our soups are from scratch, our sauces are all from scratch, and he does an amazing job. It’s very flavorful.

He is also very good at catering to anybody’s needs. If you need a low sodium diet, a high potassium diet, a low vitamin K diet, or a diabetic diet, he is very good at making sure that there’s always something on the menu to choose from. Dining is restaurant style, eat when you want. Dinner starts at 4:30 and ends at 6:00, so they can come down whenever they prefer and sit wherever they like.

I think a lot of people who come out to Maple Ridge are coming because family is there, which is a big motivating factor. We have people from all over Canada who have moved in because family is there. But once they walk into the building, the building has a very nice atmosphere. It doesn’t feel like a home, it feels like home. It’s very welcoming. Everybody feels that as soon as you walk in the door. The place is decorated very nicely, not too upper-class. It doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable, especially this generation.

There's a lady who's been here right from the beginning. She turned 105 on September 12th, and she is amazing. When she first came to us, she had already been living in another building, and she helped me get the Resident Society up and running. She helped me get the Resident Council up and running. She’s just a force to reckon with. She’s a war nurse, an amazing woman. So she stands out in my mind all the time.

The Jingle Bell Dessert Buffet. We do up a beautiful dinner, whether New York striploin or something like that, and then we turn the Brass Bell Pub into the dessert room. There are probably 100 different desserts in there. You have your dinner, and then after dinner you get up and go into the room and pick what you want to have for dessert. It's become very, very popular in the community. We started off with maybe 50 guests. Now we’re up to 250 or 300 guests. It keeps us very busy.

We are independent living, but we have support. We have care aides on 24 hours a day, one care aide per shift. They are there to answer any emergency pendants that the residents are given when they first move in. If they need help, they push the pendant, and we will see them immediately.

They are also there to offer what we call customer services. If you want somebody to help you get into the shower, remind you to take your medication, do your dishes, or do a load of laundry, we can offer that. As long as you are safe, capable of making your own choices, and not a concern to us about being a flight risk or anything like that, you can stay there because this is your home. You should be able to age in your home. 

As far as bringing help in, like nursing care, they are more than welcome to bring in whoever they like to use, whether it be Nurse Next Door, Fraser Health, or Independence Matters. You are welcome to bring anybody in to help you.

If there’s a concern, of course, we phone the family to talk and have a conversation with them and talk about next steps, if next steps are needed. As far as keeping the families up to date, we have a family email blast that we send out with a little note, especially at this time. We send out notes and a calendar so that the families know what we’re doing.

They can phone their mother or father and say, "Are you going to Bingo? Are you going to chair exercises? What are you doing today?" and they can give them a prompt to maybe join in on some of the stuff.

That's true for a lot of people. It took me a while to get my mother convinced to move into Greystone, because it is very overwhelming. Not only for the potential resident, but for the family members as well. Most people have lived in their house for 50 years, and they just can’t even fathom moving out. I always tell them that this is not your grandmother’s nursing home. You are still going to be very independent.

We want you to be able to come and go as you please and do what you want. We’re just there to help you if you need us. If not, that’s great, then you can pop by my office and have a visit. A lot of residents are nervous about the change, of course. Change is a big thing for most people, and I always tell them, come, try it out for a month. If you’re not happy, give me your notice and come back when you're ready.

I’ve maybe had one person in 13 years, where a retirement home was not for them. Everybody else is just amazed at what we have.

Because we’re such a small building, we only have 73 suites, so we’re kind of a boutique. We get to know everybody very well. When a new resident comes in, I think long and hard about who I think would be a good buddy for them, and I introduce them right away. Almost everybody there is very kind and very ready to help out anybody new.

They invite them to join them at tea time or to come with them to one of the events, and it works really well. I think long and hard about who I think they should sit with so they can enjoy a conversation over dinner, that type of thing.

As the different generations are starting to come in, now we’re looking at the leading edge of the baby boomers. We’ve had to change our menus and offer them more of a variety of global menus instead of the traditional meat, potatoes, and corn. A lot of them now are also using technology, so we’ve had to buff up what we know so we can help them when they run into difficulties.

We’ve definitely become more global. We have wine tasting events. We take advantage of Netflix and different platforms like that to show movies and programs that the residents are interested in. I have seen a big change in 13 years in how the residents coming in are expecting and wanting different things.

We stay on top of what our customers or potential residents are looking for, and we're flexible. We try to implement whatever it is they want. Recreation interviews the resident to find out what their likes and dislikes are and what they would like to try, and we try very hard to accommodate that. We’re always learning from them, and we’re very flexible. We want to make sure that they are having an enriched life. So that’s our goal

Don’t be afraid to do this. It’s a wonderful way to live. You’ve got the best of both worlds. You don’t have to cook or clean anymore, but you can come and go as you please. I think moving into a building like this gives you more independence than when you are isolated at home by yourself. You don’t have to worry about the roof, the hot water tank, going out grocery shopping, shoveling your walk, or mowing your lawn. This gives you a lot more freedom.