Haven’t we all experienced that one unrequited yearning during our lifetime, whether it is driving a Ferrari, spending a night in an eight-star hotel or hearing Leonard Cohen at a small venue?

For my wife, Marion, and me, it was a motor scooter. Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted what I thought others had — that carefree feeling, a warm breeze buffeting my face as I propelled down the road like a rocket at the great speed of 45 kilometres an hour. I secretly yearned to be an asphalt-fettered Amelia Earhart, my silk scarf fluttering in the wind. What a sense of freedom.

And I am not meant for a fancy two-wheel behemoth with a 200-page guide. My delight would be an unhurried 49cc that offers a pamphlet-sized manual.

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For most people, the idea of retirement conjures up a time of hard-earned rest and relaxation, starting new projects, learning experiences or travel. But for retirees who are suddenly beginning again, raising the children of their children, that time is filled with hard work, challenges that must be surmounted and much unexpected joy.

“I have less energy now but much more patience,” says Linda Turner, founder of the Cangrands Quebec Chapter, as she brings her granddaughters Lauren, 10, and Alexis, 11, to their weekly swimming lesson at the Y. “I am blessed, they’re really good kids.”

When the children, then 3 and 5, came to live with her, she didn’t know of any other grandparents raising grandchildren, so she looked online and discovered the chat room on the Cangrands website. More...

When Maureen McPhee, 77, lost her husband, she suddenly found herself living in a houseful of memories in Lachine. She felt she needed to leave and she knew where she wanted to be.

“My family is all here,” says McPhee, one of the first residents to move into the Masterpiece West Island Retirement Residence when it was built four years ago.

Though hers is a luxury residence, it was necessity that led her to choose the sun-filled corner apartment she has grown to love.

With Oliver, a miniature bundle of canine cuteness curled up in her lap, she insists she would never have moved anywhere if she couldn’t have brought him along.

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