A retired accountant and mother of four manages to survive on the pension of her late husband, who spent his life traveling the vast outdoors of Quebec to install electricity pylons when our cities were still plunged into darkness.
“I get my pension from Hydro-Québec,” Fleurette Massé, 89, mother of two girls and two boys, confesses to the Journal. This gives him just over $2,000 per month to finance his residence.
“I also saved some money, but not much because I never lived in excess. But I feel in abundance because a little thing gives me joy,” adds the Vallée-du-Richelieu resident, who worked in a garage when she was young.
Like them, more and more seniors are having to roll up their sleeves to make ends meet. For some people this is easier, for others it is more difficult.
Although the FADOQ network welcomed the federal effort to provide food and dental care assistance in the last budget, the association would have liked to see Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) also improved.
“A person under 75 years of age who only receives pension insurance and GIS benefits from an annual income of only $20,575, which is below the official federal government poverty line,” denounced the FADOQ.
“I will manage to get there”
According to Fleurette Massé, who is approaching her 90th birthday, you have to impose iron discipline on yourself. “I manage to get there,” she sums up with a smile on her lips.
When asked what she does to make ends meet at the supermarket, she replies that she only buys what she needs. “You need protein,” she says.
“You also have to have fun to keep morale up. Morality is very important because it is at the heart of life,” she emphasizes.
Once or twice a week, Fleurette goes to the first floor of her apartment to treat herself to dinner in the dining room.
She says she is happy to be healthy enough to be able to get some fresh air. When Le Journal met her last Monday, she had just returned from a training session to learn how to prevent blood pressure.
“We weren’t rich, but we never lacked for money. “My parents were the same,” she concluded before continuing her walk.
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