PETERBOROUGH, ONT.—Ninety-eight-year-old Marguerite Cook is showing uncovered arms and a bit of bared hip. Fifty-seven-year-old Donna Clarke is wearing elbow pads over her … well, fleshier upper body parts.

The photos are not unlike those of countless fundraising calendar girls before them. But the 11 not-quite-naked ladies of Peterborough who shed bras and business suits in aid of affordable housing are being pilloried for participating in “pornography,” “elder abuse” and the objectification of women.

In a small but “vitriolic” smear campaign, says Clarke, naysayers have spewed invectives in volunteers’ faces and left anonymous phone rants about the hockey-themed calendar, which features well-known members of the community.

“It’s an attack and an insult to all of those marvellous ladies who participated,” says Clarke, executive director of Homegrown Homes, the fundraising beneficiary. “We took our clothes off to draw attention to the crushing need for affordable housing in our city.”

Homegrown Homes, a 14-year-old non-profit corporation that receives no operating money from the government, hopes to raise $45,000 to buy a duplex. They currently provide housing for 54 people in 20 units.

The $20 calendar was produced with the support of the OHL’s Peterborough Petes and hockey legend Eddie Shack. Since it went on sale in October at retail outlets and online at homegrownhomes.ca, one-third of the 3,000 copies have been sold.

The models, aged 40-something and up, show varying amounts of skin and hockey gear in photos Clarke calls “very, very tastefully done.”

Since the 2003 British film Calendar Girls popularized the peel-and-pose idea as a way of raising funds, numerous real-life versions have appeared, usually with nary a ripple of negativity.

But while reaction in “conservative” Peterborough has been mostly positive, Clarke worries that cowardly critics who won’t identify themselves are sabotaging sales efforts during the critical holiday period. One shopper expressed his horror over “a calendar filled with gay women,” she says. And various callers have denounced it as “pornography” and “elder abuse,” and complained that it “belittled and objectified women to the worse possible degree.”

There have also been whisperings about a supposed boycott and a church minister who warned his congregation against the “disgusting” product, according to Clarke.

“Unfounded rumours and anonymous lambastings are pretty low tactics to employ against a charitable organization that works to fill a great need in our city,” she fumes.

Cook, who turns 99 this week, is offended by the backlash over something that is for a “very good cause.” Posing with just a towel around her neck “was hard, it really was,” says Miss January, who fretted about the reaction of her fellow churchgoers.

“But five of my friends met me at the door and hugged me and said, ‘Oh, that was wonderful,’” Cook beams, adding the assistant minister also congratulated her.

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And what’s not to like about mature women who are comfortable in their own skin, wonders Caitlin Stephenson, a chocolate maker at the Naked Chocolate shop downtown where calendars wait for buyers behind the confections.

“I think it’s hilarious; I love it,” she says. “But we did have one woman who called it hockey porn.”