Zoomer Magazine June/July 2022

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE statistics to dash the construct that age is just a number and a matter of opinion – your own. The 2021 Census results released in April showed that, although you may be as young as you feel, aging marches on. Those 65 and over now make up 19 per cent of the population, while those 85 and up (members of the inter-war and greatest generations) are the fastest-growing age group, with a 16 per cent increase in centenarians since 2019. But boomers who have long enjoyed flexing their demographic might are on their way to losing the leverage of scale. For the first time since the end of the baby boom in 1965, they make up less than a quarter of the population, with millennials…

I KNOW HOW TO DO PRIDE WELL. I can run a mile in a cork wedgie – and have, repeatedly, even as I slid into my late 50s. I marched in New York at an unsanctioned parade to mark AIDS activism and the 25th anniversary of Stonewall, the 1969 riot sparked by a police raid on a LGBTQ2S+ club. This uprising by a group of white, brown and Black queer and trans folk is commemorated by all Prides, like the one in my hometown of Winnipeg, which I skipped through in a sarong. Or the parade in Toronto that my boyfriend and I, dressed in ridiculous outfits, pranced through for 18 years in a row, a tradition that stopped in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To say that…

EDWARD BURTYNSKY’S career is dedicated to documenting how nature has been transformed by human activity, and collectors worldwide covet his large-format photographs of industrial landscapes. It is fitting that the première of his multimedia art installation, “Edward Burtynsky’s In the Wake of Progress,” will be projected on the giant advertising billboards at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square, (above) arguably this country’s epicentre of commercialism, on June 11 and 12 for the Luminato arts festival. A powerful, non-verbal sound and visual experience about the environmental consequences of all the stuff we consume, the art installation will later embark on an international tour of festivals and museums from California to Australia. A truly made-in-Canada immersive project, it was co-produced by Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd’s The Wall), with an original score by composer Phil…

Turns out the Fountain of Youth comes from a deep fryer. An Illinois couple found a bag of 63-year-old McDonald’s french fries in the wall of their home during renovations, telling NBC News “they were very well preserved.” I want to know more about Bertha; 92-year-old TikTok star Grandma Droniak posted a video outlining three rules for her funeral. Don’t cry too much, get drunk after and don’t invite Bertha, a woman she dislikes. A 100-year-old Brazilian man sets a world record after working for the same company for 84 years: Which made the timing of his downsizing the next day all the more unfortunate. Walk this way. A U.K. study showed people could shave up to 16 years off their biological age with regular, brisk walks. (AND DOWN) “So…

IN CASE YOU missed it, golf is back. When contemporary pop stars are spotted on the fairways – guys like super-influencer Harry Styles, who spends part of his downtime on tours exploring local courses – you know millennials are following boomers, who’ve been keenly observing rockers like Alice Cooper and Bob Seger chasing birdies for decades. (Styles’ former One Direction band mate Niall Horan is also a keen golfer; he co-founded golf management company Modest! Golf in 2016.) Of course, cinema has a long and lively history with the game, from classics like the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis vehicle The Caddy (1953) to Bill Murray in Caddyshack (1980), not to mention Adam Sandler’s inimitable Happy Gilmore and Kevin Costner’s Tin Cup (both, 1996), The Legend of Bagger Vance…

IT WAS A MARCH night in Toronto in 1977. On stage at the El Mocambo Tavern on Spadina Avenue was a band that had been billed as the Cockroaches, opening for Canadian rockers April Wine. But wait: The guy in the white jumpsuit unzipped to the navel looked a lot like Mick Jagger and the guitar player to his left, standing in front of a Jack Daniels bottle on top of an amplifier, sure looked like Keith Richards. Then the band started to play “Honky Tonk Women,” and the ruse unravelled. More than 300 people, many of them winners of a contest held by a radio station, were stunned to find themselves at the first of two secret gigs by the Rolling Stones. (Margaret Trudeau, wife of then-prime minister…