It’s hard not to fall under the spell of Christine Mounsteven: her thoughtful comments about what the housing world needs to meet the demands of an aging population; her funky look; her passion for co-op housing; her laugh; the loving way she speaks about her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. And then you learn she’s 90 and you’re really hooked!
Christine has become the poster child for aging in place since joining Charles Hastings co-op in midlife.
Here’s the backstory: Christine Mounsteven immigrated to Canada with her Scottish trade unionist family in 1947. Her father secured work in just three days. Housing, however, was harder to come by. The housing uncertainty the newcomer family felt surely sowed the seeds for the passionate housing advocate Mounsteven has become. With a labour activist father, young Christine met many of the people for whom housing co-ops were named. When the family finally settled in Toronto’s west end, Christine, a teenager by then, started working part-time as a ward aide in Toronto Western Hospital. She left high school soon after to work full-time, first as a Bell Telephone operator, did some catering with her mother, and finally spent some time selling high fashion clothing at The Room at Simpson’s Fairview. By then, she was married, raising kids and living the suburban dream in Don Mills. Eventually, though, she returned to school and found her career as a mental health and addictions counsellor, co-ordinating a day program for people with chronic mental illness at George Brown College.
Forty years ago, when her three daughters moved out, she knew she no longer needed the house where she’d stayed after her husband died. A few years earlier, she’d watched Charles Hastings Co-op being built near George Brown. When she was ready to move, she was lucky the co-op had an opening. Before long, she threw herself into governance to get the full benefit of co-op living. Co-op workshops opened her eyes to the fact the sector was bigger than just Charles Hastings.
In 1997, when the sector successfully stopped the proposed federal download of co-ops to the provinces, Christine saw the power of collective action. That gave her the advocacy bug. She was her co-op’s delegate at a Halifax CHF Canada AGM. Her co-op wanted to put forward a resolution related to the impact of mortgage renewal on subsidies. She didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer in her initial attempts to get the resolution on the agenda. She convinced staff to put it to the membership and the resolution passed: a win for her but a huge victory for the sector to have another passionate member who realized she knew how to make stuff happen.
Christine, with co-oper-friends, Eleanor MacDonald and Corrie Galloway, saw the need to be ready for the aging population and pushed to get relevant issues to the centre of the sector’s agenda. Christine became the first chair of CHF Canada’s aging in place group, where she was the driving force behind a national survey of co-op members to assess current and anticipated members’ age-related needs. In 2011, she became the first chair of CHFT’s aging in place committee, a position she holds again today.
Christine may have gotten her advocacy chops in the co-op sector, but that was just the beginning. She brought the non-market housing perspective to the Ontario Division of Canadian Pensioners Concerned. As its president, she spoke to the Special Senate Committee on Aging in 2008. The next year, she spoke to the provincial Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions where, drawing on her 30 years as a mental health and addictions counsellor, she advocated in favour of increasing funding to ensure the province had enough geriatric specialists to meet the growing demand. She worries even more about that today as the mental health crisis affects seniors as well as younger cohorts.
While Christine has been moving the needle on social change for decades, she tells us her proudest accomplishment is raising three daughters who share her social conscience. I bet they’ve always been pretty proud of her too, when they weren’t worrying her activism was going to land her in jail!
In 2022, CHFT’s members elected Christine Mounsteven to the board where she still holds a seat. It’s not been the practice of CHFT’s board to honour its own directors, but at age 90, Christine continues to be a rule-breaker and so it’s fitting that she be the first sitting director to join the group of lifetime directors!
We congratulate and thank Christine Mounsteven for her decades of co-operative living and passionate advocacy. We couldn’t be more proud to have her as CHFT Lifetime Director.