Tag Archives: seniors

CKMS Community News, Newsroom

CKMS News – 2026-10-06 – Scams targeting seniors are on the rise

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Host: Leah Gerber

Scams targeting seniors are on the rise. In 2024, older adults in Canada lost 178 million dollars to financial scams, a 300 percent increase from 2020, according to a House of Commons committee report. This is also an underrepresentation, since many people do not report when they’ve been scammed, out of embarrassment. 

Radio Waterloo interviewed Cosmin Munteanu, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, and the Schlegel Research Chair in Technology for Healthy Aging at the Research Institute for Aging, as well as David Parkinson, founder of the John Parkinson Family Foundation to understand why senior-targeted scams on are the rise, the signs of senior financial abuse, the most common types of scams, and how to take proactive action. 

CKMS Community News, Newsroom

Seniors – a lot of them – are meeting up in Waterloo to talk about travel

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Host: Leah Gerber

Every other Friday afternoon anywhere from 120 to 180 people gather together at the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex Community Pavilion to listen to a presentation about someone’s travel story.

The program has been meeting for well over ten years, and in the last few years has really begun to pick up steam with 2400 attendees in 2024.

Radio Waterloo spoke with Sarah Kelly, who organizes the program for the City of Waterloo, as well as long-time participant, volunteer host and presenter Rick Chambers to speak about the program and what exactly is drawing all these people together.

CKMS Community News, Newsroom

Compelled to craft: more people turning to arts programming after the pandemic

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Host: Leah Gerber

Since the pandemic, recreation managers across Kitchener-Waterloo are noticing a sustained increase in the number of people participating consistently in arts and crafts programming. Radio Waterloo spoke with programming managers for the City of Waterloo, City of Kitchener and the Kitchener market, who all had similar observations: Whether it’s for seniors during the day, the general public in the evenings, or the delivery of solo crafting kits to peoples’ homes, more and more people across both cities seem drawn to taking up a craft in the last two years since programs started opening up after the pandemic. While some thought an interest in crafting might be temporary, the trend seems to be growing, not shrinking. 

CKMS Community News, Newsroom, Shows

CKMS News -2024-10-30- Senior Women Living Together matches housemates to counter rising costs of living

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CKMS News -2024-10-30- Senior Women Living Together matches housemates to counter rising costs of living.

dan kellar
Kitchener, ON – As landlords continue to raise rental prices across the country, many are being left behind. According to rentals.ca, average rent in Canada has been increased by 25% since 2021. For some, the result is homelessness, and Waterloo Region is no exception – a recent report shows at least a 129% rise in chronic homelessness here since 2020.

“I knew I was going to be homeless at some point if I did not do something” says Pat Dunn, a widowed retiree now living in Peterborough. Dunn is the founder and the executive director of the non-profit organization Senior Women Living Together. Through subscriber generated profiles on their website, the organization finds matches for senior women, who then meet up to discuss living as housemates.  

This show features an interview with Pat Dunn who discusses her own brush with homelessness and rising rent led her to helping others in the same situation. The organization is currently promoting their free service in Waterloo Region.