On the Brink: More Ontario retirees speak out about cost of living woes

Many seniors in Ontario are struggling with rising costs and their retirement income rather than past incomes.

After the re-release of the global news “Brink series”, we received a lot of replies from people who said they were in a similar situation to the couple.

Sharon McArthur, 74, and her husband, Wayne Gattinger, 73, of Brooke-Alvinston, Ontario, talk about how the cost of living has caused them to have to stop family dinners.

Wendy Colman, 69, of Cornwall, Ontario, lives with her daughter and granddaughter and says things have reached that point, which is really sad.

She said she has struggled with the cost of retirement over the past few years.

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“It’s hard for people, and I never thought I would retire that way,” she said. “No one has a conversation.”

Dawn Chaffe, 68, lives in St. Catherine’s, Ontario and says living with a single income has been difficult.

“A lot of people retire around me, no one is doing well, but because I’m single, it means you survive a CPP and seniority safety,” he said.

“I just gradually became more frustrated with the government and have been frustrated since Covid.”

Like the couple in the first story, Chaffey said she also had to rely on the food library to replenish her food.

“I was bankrupt and I didn’t have any money for groceries on my birthday in February (because of) my birthday,” she said. “So I took some out of my credit card and you ended up balancing the high credit bill at the end of the month.”

John McLaughlin, 82, is from London, Ontario and his dollar is not as it used to be.

McLaughlin said he retired in 2005 after working at the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant and had long fears that his pension and retirement savings would remain in sync with inflation.

“I thank God, I did some savings, I got a good pension because I was looking at my assets almost every month,” he said during the trade war with President Donald Trump.

“So when you get a big hit like we are now… you’ll notice more.”

The second story in the Edge series of Global News relaunched is scheduled to be released on Saturday.

& Copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.