Josh Freed: Like the roads of Montreal, our aging population is falling apart

There is a growing epidemic of hip and knee replacements and more detours than a Metropolitan Blvd. detour.

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As Montrealers, we constantly complain about the infrastructure: our crumbling overpasses, sunken streets, and potholes the size of a Guinness World Record.

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Yet we ignore a much larger infrastructure crisis that will soon overwhelm Montreal and Canada.

I am referring to our personal infrastructure crumbling, as the population of Quebec and Canada ages. This problem is not aged concrete, it is our aged flesh and blood, the very foundation of our nation.

Like our roads, we citizens are falling apart.

That’s because, like our highway system, much of our citizenship was created between the late 1940s and 1960s, during the baby boom. Now we boomers are aging in a growing epidemic of hip and knee replacements and more detours than a Metropolitan Blvd. detour.

Our over-worn ankle joints are rusting away just as fast as our flyover joints, while our stomachs sag, discs disintegrate and arches fall off.

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My own bodily infrastructure is typical. I have a bike rear, tennis knee and hip loaded with groceries that will eventually need a major repair. I already need dental reconstruction and my bald head is facing total hair destruction.

Yet I am only a microcosm of the enormous personal infrastructure crisis hurtling toward us, as our aging population crumbles faster than the Champlain Bridge.

According to the latest census, 38 percent of Canada’s population turned 65 in the last decade, and they’re getting older by the minute, as most of you read this with your heavy-duty glasses on.

The problem is that we boomers do everything at the same time, like lemmings. We are born, go to school, get married, divorce, have kids, buy condos, and eat gluten-free, omega-enhanced, grain-fed turfgrass together.

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Not surprisingly, we’re simultaneously starting to fall apart, too, like devices bought in a huge nationwide mass warranty program. The future is easy to read. Just like our traffic-clogged highways, our citizens will have clogged arteries that will require bypass surgery.

We are spending a fortune erecting new structural support for our streets, but how many men will need help for erectile dysfunction? We waste time fighting over artificial turf in parks, when so many need artificial hips and perhaps artificial intelligence.

Even our city’s pothole problem is trivial compared to the growing number of potbellies. During COVID, most Canadians gained weight, dramatically increasing our city’s Gross Municipal Weight.

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This has put more pressure on our personal infrastructures, as our aging legs struggle under the load, like the strained foundations beneath the eternally under construction des Pins Ave. But we are all des Pins Ave. waiting.

It’s not just Montreal. The entropy of our anatomy will also cause a national crisis. Millions of aging Canadians already suffer from hearing loss from attending too many rock concerts, broken knees from too much running, as well as golf shoulder, pickleball wrist and remote control elbow.

Soon we will demand physical therapy, massage therapy, sex therapy, facelifts, facelifts and a national multi-million dollar botox plan. We will insist on the latest lifestyle therapies, from healing salt cave juice cleanses to holistic ylang-ylang aromatherapy and Himalayan heart stone massage.

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We will be under mental duress too, as we suffer from memory loss and forget our passwords, our addresses, and where we park our cars, then wander down the street, a new class of temporarily homeless.

This crisis will also influence social and political policies. As the new slogan “Don’t trust anyone under 80” spreads, we will vote en masse for those like us. The result will make Joe Biden look like a young leader.

I can foresee news several years from now when 400,000 aging Montrealers are hit simultaneously with asthma and arthritis during a ferocious summer swell of humidity.

“Montreal entered a crisis today when 20 percent of the city queued at the hospital, seeking medical attention.

“Quebec’s premier has promised emergency action once he leaves the hospital, where he is recovering from a double hip replacement, the same procedure the premier is recovering from.”

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There will be few doctors then, because most are baby boomers who will retire or need hospitalization for their own personal infrastructure problems. There will be few nurses under the age of 70 to push our wheelchairs.

Even today, when we desperately need thousands of nurses and caregivers, Quebec is limiting immigration, even though immigrants make up one in four Canadian health workers.

Will we have to hire temporary replacements like Mexican farmworkers, who are allowed in only briefly before being sent home?

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Crampinfoot, I was going to bring you lunch, but my foster care visa just expired and I’m being deported in 30 minutes. My replacement is expected tomorrow, if he gets through immigration.

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“Just in case, I got you some emergency chocolate bars from the vending machine. You owe me $14.”

What can be done about our already overburdened Medicare system? Ottawa keeps announcing multi-million dollar road infrastructure plans, but we also need a personal infrastructure plan.

We need knees. Dental bridges. We must pull our pots and prop up our buttocks. We need young immigrants who speak the language of health care.

The literal backbone of our city and nation will soon collapse, so who will be there to massage mine when I need it?

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