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West Van caregiver in no rush to retire just yet

Home Instead Senior Care touts Unretirement
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Doug Rush guesses he’s probably met half the people in West Vancouver. If he keeps working, he might just encounter the other half.

After spending 16 years at the helm of a popular custom T-shirt boutique in West Van, Rush decided to take some much-needed time for himself. He emerged years later doing something new, something that fills him with joy.

“I find this job very fulfilling,” Rush tells the North Shore News about his role as a caregiver at the West Vancouver branch of Home Instead Senior Care. “I see my role as: we improve quality of life.”

As Rush reflects on his life spent on the North Shore and his career, Home Instead Senior Care is touting caregiving as a rewarding way for some people, including older adults, to make a living or find meaningful work in their later years.

It’s part of a new campaign the senior care centre, which has six franchises around the Lower Mainland including West Vancouver, is calling Unretire Yourself, according to Marina Taylor, community education manager with Home Instead.

“Retirement is no longer a point in time, it’s an evolving process,” says Taylor. “Whether people want to continue to be involved in a passion, either through volunteering or through paid work, there’s lots of opportunities out there.”

The point of the Unretire Yourself campaign is to inform people that have stopped working and find they still crave the action and social interaction of the workforce, that there’s numerous options available to them.

Knowing this information is especially relevant these days because people are living longer than ever before, notes Taylor.

“Being able to stay socially connected with people is really important and that you can do through volunteering or through work if you want to,” she says. “For people in their late 50s, 60s, 70s, they have the chance to say, ‘Hey, I can do exactly what I want.’”

Rush says he’s still recognized on the street from his days running Dog’s Ear T-Shirt Boutique on Marine Drive. After selling the business due to health reasons in 2011, he re-entered the workforce once he was better and says he now gets immense satisfaction from helping others – driving them to doctors’ appointments, or just making sure he can provide an open ear for a client that wants to have a chat.

“Patience, empathy, compassion – if you have these things you would enjoy this line of work, no question,” he says. “I wouldn’t have thought to seek it out in all honesty, it just came my way, as these things often do, when we’re ready to receive them.”

Home Instead Senior Care will be one of many exhibitors at the upcoming third annual North Shore Seniors’ Health Expo, running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sept. 8 at the West Vancouver Seniors’ Activity Centre.

Home Instead is also running a free one-hour workshop for anyone interested in learning more about how to Unretire Yourself next Tuesday, Sept. 11 at 10 a.m. at 301-2232 Marine Dr., West Van.