ABSTRACT
Individuals do not age in isolation but rather as part of families. Public awareness of the negative aspects of prolonging life through life-sustaining technology has grown. The specter of spending one’s last days maintained by machinery is a haunting one. The sobering argument of High and Turner is that current directions are moving family members further from the center of decision making, in direct contradiction to what most older people seem to prefer. In Canada, an imminent nation-wide referendum on a new constitutional accord has created a climate of enormous uncertainty about the future social, political and economic structure of the country. Conservative forces have not been restricted to the United States, although their impact to date has been less visible in Canada. The old age pension while paid to everyone is now “clawed back” from higher income persons through taxation. The “family allowance” used to be paid to parents on a monthly, per-child basis.
