Living Well showcase spotlights supports for seniors

By Lethbridge Herald on April 29, 2023.

Herald photo by Steffanie Costigan Seniors and exhibitors filled the gym during the LSCO’s Living Well Showcase this week.

Steffanie Costigan – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Aging is another way of living. What that life looks like can depend on health and how well we are taking care of ourselves mentally and physically.

Thursday morning was the opening of the Lethbridge Senior Citizens Organization 10th annual Living Well Showcase which also ran until 3 p.m. Friday.

Rob Miyashiro, LSCO executive director, shared the purpose of the showcase and why it benefits the aging community. 

“Our showcase supports services available in the community, and its goods and merchandise as well that are relevant to an aging population. Actually a lot of it is relevant to everybody. And so we wanted to bring all these vendors into one place so that the public can come and talk to the people that are actually doing the work or some of the goods and have a really good conversation and a really informative setting,” said Miyashiro. 

The showcase featured many supports in the community for seniors, along with varying organizations and businesses. Miyashiro expressed the importance it is coming out of the pandemic for the community to learn more. 

“Coming out of the post-pandemic and the more information, our visitors for the show they want to know more about whatever it is, and I think that is what the pandemic taught us is that we do need to know more things. We need to be more curious, and we need to understand more,” he shared.

Guest speakers at Thursday’s show spoke to the public about important topics such as fraud prevention, designing a comforting plan for your family, and prepare now to avoid estate problems later.

 Austyn Anderson, associate lawyer and one of the speakers at the event, shared the focus of his speech and the benefits of preparing estate ahead of time.

“The theme of this speech is prepare now to prevent problems later. Because we don’t want our personal representative or our executor, or our children having to go through all these legal costs that may come up if we don’t have our plan in place ahead of time. I think it will really help over the community to understand why we need to do this now; the small cost it will be today so we can avoid these issues down the road in the future,” said Anderson. 

It is estimated there were over 70 exhibitors showcased, and the highly anticipated guest speaker for Friday’s speech was Dr. Robert Sutherland on the topic of Alzheimer’s. Pat Frank, the program coordinator of Kainai First Nations Elders, shared the importance of her attendance at the showcase and how it can help at the reserve.

“I am bringing our board here. But we have been here before several times, twice. The president came up to our reserve one year during our open house and invited us, so we have been coming ever since. They have some on the reserve but not as big as this one. I think this one is very informative and, at the same time, important to help us with doing something on the reserve, too,” she said.

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