Interview with The Briton House management, Mark Wells

My father started [Briton House] about 44 years ago, and there wasn't really anything at that time that you'd refer to as a hotel-style retirement. There were nursing homes or you stayed at home. This was early on in the development of the industry, in 1976. We realized that as time went by, people would need more care. We provided great meals, housekeeping, lifestyle, entertainment, movies, and music, but people didn't want to leave to go to a nursing home or elsewhere for care. 

As we grew, we leaned more in the direction of care. … And 44 years later, we're still providing a high degree of care in our facility. We have an assisted living facility currently that's 62 beds out of a total of 225. … When we expanded our facility about 20 years ago, [we] added a good deal of care and increased the proportion of heavy care or assisted living. 

We have vibrant and strong independent living, a community that enjoys all the amenities, like] our domed indoor pool. We have a 15,000 square foot indoor garden for the wintertime, with skylights and beautiful sun. We have a sun simulation room, one of the first in Ontario. If you put a spectrometer in front of it, it's full-spectrum sunlight, with the exception of UVA and UVB, so you don't have to wear sunscreen. You can sit there in the sand. There's a little beach. After 20 minutes of that, you feel like you've sat in the sun for a while. There are lots of anecdotal benefits of being in the sun. 

Anybody can use the sunroom. The pool [has] Aquafit programs. We have an outdoor terrace in our North Tower. We have a movie theater and a concert space. The concert space is a recital hall. It doubles as a 116-fixed-seat theater [with] Surround Sound Movies. But then we also do concerts there. 

[We have] a strong connection to music, and when we expanded and built our North Tower, we wanted to get a recital hall that could have really high-level concerts, which we continue. And we've had the Concert Mass with the Toronto Symphony here, playing duets with the Concert Mass for the Montreal Symphony. … We have really high-quality entertainment, specifically in the music field, which our residents enjoy. A lot of [them] come from North Toronto [and] have backgrounds as members of the symphony or the opera or going to the ballet. They enjoy that connection. … Our residents really appreciate and understand that a lot of artists [we feature] would cost $50 a ticket to hear at the Saint Lawrence Center, but they’re here. We also make sure they've told us things that they enjoy.

We have a roundtable. Members are elected to those positions [and] those people are well known to our residents. On a monthly basis, we have new residents' socials [with] champagne and hors d'œuvres, and play some games and just get to know each other. But we also introduce members of the roundtable specifically during that time every month, so that new residents get to know who's on the board or roundtable, and they can go anonymously and make a suggestion or comment to that individual, who then brings it to the broader roundtable. Then we hear it in an official way. There are also notes produced in those meetings. It's a council of residents [we’ve had for] 20 years. … [It] allows someone to express concerns in a relaxed environment where they can be anonymous and not feel any pressure. 

Our staff is incredible. They've been here a long time. The chef has been here 40 years. A lot of the servers in our dining room have been here 20 or 25 years. It's not like there'll be a different server every six months. There isn't a big turnover. ... They enjoy working here and coming to work. That's shown by the fact that they're still here 25, 30, 40 years later. And that rubs off on the residents [and] they feel that. It's an important part of our culture.

The menu is on a rotation of around two weeks, but we also change that up regularly. My niece works directly with the chef and the people in food service. As I said, she has a nutrition degree, but also our suppliers have nutritionists. We [also] have food tastings where we [ask] suppliers to see their newest particular item—bread, buns, those kinds of things. They set up in our atrium, and residents have sheets of paper and rate different options. Those events allow residents to have a direct influence. And we get feedback all the time, either through the roundtable or just directly.

Menu planning is done through our Food Service division, headed up by members, but also our nutrition planning teams. And also we get advice from our suppliers as well and input from our residents and guests directly.  We, of course, deal with all of the usual things [like] gluten and dairy issues… diabetic issues, salt-free, all those kinds of things. … Food is something that has to be done well ... and being here 44 years with a full facility, I think, speaks to the fact that that's true. … The food is first class. It's very important to people, and we allow them to have a say in what they like.

When someone new comes in, a move-in coordinator assists them with all issues. Once they've moved in, we tour them around, and they meet the staff, particularly health care staff, with respect to care plans and so forth. We also provide escorts free for the first week to allow people to get familiar here with the facility in terms of coming down to meals and so forth. To someone who's new, that helps them just get a little bit acquainted in terms of integrating. 

We also work on seating in the dining room. We work carefully with our activities department and medical people, basically working with their background and saying, ‘Who are they going to get along with? Who should they sit with?’ The seating is assigned. … You want to make sure someone feels comfortable when they sit down to have a meal. Knowing the background of the other people is really important. ... You really have to deal with that sensitively and make sure that the person is sitting with people they're going to connect with. ... The family consultant learns the background and assists in that process. We spend a fair amount of time on this when a person comes in.

[If you need more care], we provide care. No one needs to move. We can take someone all the way to essentially palliative. So we have full assisted living in the capacity and the capability to do that. So no transition is necessary. … We can support someone right through. 

We work with the family and the residents themselves. There's a lot of communication back and forth, and discussion … We can provide a great deal of care in independent living. If someone still wants to remain in their suite, we can provide it there, to let them continue in their independence and yet have care à la carte in their suite. 

The Yonge Eglington area, uptown, is very flat, geographically, generally speaking. It's great for our guests. There's a lot of residential in the neighborhood, Leeside, Mount Pleasant Village, so forth. It's great for taking walks. It's also convenient for transportation [with] the new LRT going in. We have a bus stop right outside, groceries, pharmacy, a lot of shops and local shops in the neighborhood. And a lot of our residents come from the area and enjoy the shops and residential walking areas. It's a great first class neighborhood.