CLARENVILLE, N.L.—Staring at an empty playground, 90-year-old Baxter Tuck said it was rare to meet a man of his age when he was a child.

Born in 1923 in the small coastal community of Shoal Harbour, N.L., Tuck came from a family of 11 brothers and sisters. He’s seen many of his province’s youth move away since then, leaving the older ones behind.

Empty playgrounds and elderly people are common in Newfoundland and Labrador. The province already has the oldest median population in Canada, and continues to age rapidly. In an effort to reverse the trend, the provincial government is creating a population growth strategy. How Newfoundland adapts to an increasingly elderly population will be an example for other provinces that are facing the same challenge.

The entire country is getting older, a result of the first Baby Boomer generation entering retirement age. Between 1971 and 2012, the median age in Canada increased to 40 years from 26.

But Newfoundland and Labrador is aging fastest. The median age rose to 44 from 21 in that timeframe — nine years more than the national figure.

In the short term, for five years running this province has had the most rapidly aging population in the country, except 2012 when it was tied with Prince Edward Island. By 2036, Statistics Canada predicts 31 per cent of Newfoundland’s population will be seniors, the highest rate in the country.

Dr. Alvin Simms, a Memorial University geography professor specializing in Newfoundland and Labrador demographics, says the province is aging fastest because the collapse of the cod fishery in the early 1990s forced many young families to move away to find work. The 20-year-olds of 1991 are now 42 and raising children, but raising them somewhere else.

“The opportunities weren’t there for a lot of young people, so we lost a lot through out-migration,” he says. “As soon as the fishery collapsed all the young people with any sort of skills moved elsewhere and found other jobs.”

In an attempt to increase the birth rate in Newfoundland and have children, the provincial government has begun work on a population growth strategy to be released next year. The public is also being invited to provide advice on how to reverse the trend. At one session the attendees suggested daycare programs, a tax rebate program for employers, and better daycare services.

“The strategy will address the growing demand for labour, and ensure the sustainability of our communities,” Kevin O’Brien, the minister in charge of the strategy, wrote in an email. “It will focus primarily on the attraction and retention of people to our province, including expatriates, other Canadians, and immigrants from around the world. We will also focus on family-friendly initiatives and policies to support community well-being.”

The province has a spotty history with efforts to artificially grow population. In 2007, then-premier Danny Williams, calling Newfoundlanders “a dying race,” made a campaign promise to give mothers $1,000 for every child they gave birth to, an imitation of similar plans in Quebec and Europe. The next year saw the highest number of children born in Newfoundland in a decade, 4,925, but since then the number has slid to less than that before 2008, with 4,420 children born in the province in 2012-2013.

A baby bonus may not be the magic bullet, but if Canada’s most easterly province is to find a healthy balance of age and youth, something must change to get Newfoundland’s playgrounds full of life again.

Simms says a population growth strategy can’t reverse broad demographic trends in a few years; it will take decades. In the meantime, Newfoundland must adapt to and accommodate for an increasingly elderly population.

Changing demographics are already having economic impacts on the province. Eastern Health, Newfoundland’s largest health authority, has seen a steady increase in the percentage of people using its services who are over 65, reaching 36.6 per cent in 2012. The department of health spends $161 million a year providing home support to 8,200 clients, or $19,600 per client.

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital and provincial lead of Ontario’s Seniors Strategy, says Newfoundland will be a test case for how other provinces can adapt to a predominantly elderly population.

“In Newfoundland in particular you’re actually seeing the future of where the rest of Canada is heading, a province where you have an even larger aging demographic,” he says.

Ontario’s median age, currently sitting at 40, has been increasing steadily for decades and is projected to reach 43 years by 2036. Newfoundland’s median age in 2012 was 44.

Health departments across the country are working together to develop programs that deliver care to an aging population at a time when resources for health care are stretched. At a meeting last March, premiers agreed to make seniors an inter-provincial working initiative.

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“This is a pan-Canadian area of importance,” says Sinha. “All across Canada, the numbers may be a little bit higher or lower, but fundamentally we have the same challenges and opportunities in front of us.”

Ontario’s Senior’s Strategy is the most comprehensive document on aging produced in Canada, according to Sinha, and is used by other provinces to develop health care programs for seniors. In turn, Ontario’s health community looks for success stories in other jurisdictions.

“Ontario is more than happy to share our expertise,” says Sinha. “We’re also going to be looking closely at what Newfoundland is doing and what sort of things they innovate around.”

The growing pains of growing old

Newfoundland’s aging population is causing strains in many ways, from business to family life.

Randy Letto, owner of a fast food restaurant in Clarenville, N.L. says he’s understaffed and has to close earlier because there aren’t enough workers to cover shifts. People who work at his restaurant are generally younger, according to Letto, and young people can find better paying work in places such as Alberta.

“I constantly advertise, but you’re not getting an abundance of applicants by any means,” he says.

“You’re not giving the public the service they require, for sure. The lineups are longer and it takes longer to be served. If you go to a Walmart or a grocery store you’re always waiting and people are grumbling about the length of the lineups, but what can you do if you don’t have the staff to run the store?”

Letto has hired employees through the federal Temporary Foreign Workers Program, but says he’s still doesn’t have enough full-time employees to run the restaurant.

Immigrants both foreign and temporary could be one solution to an aging population, but Newfoundland and Labrador lags behind the rest of Canada in attracting new people. Last year 751 immigrants came to the province, or just 0.2 per cent of all immigrants to Canada.

The drain of youth from the province has social consequences too. Evelyn Carberry is a 63-year-old woman from Burgoyne’s Cove, N.L. Like many mothers in this province, her children have gone west for work. She’s got two sons and a daughter living in Alberta.

“I really would like to see them in Newfoundland,” she says. “I’d like to be closer to them. We were out there last winter, and spent eight months in Alberta, from October to June. That was the first time I spent Christmas with my three children in 23 years.”