This trans senior is living her best life in Montreal and wants the same for others
CBC
On Sunday afternoons, residents of the Manoir de Casson retirement home in Montreal can hear their neighbour Vanessa Frey play piano in the lounge — something she loves to do.
People will come to her days after her performances to tell her they love her shows and that she brought them back to their youth.
"It's like being Paul McCartney or something," she said. "This is not, to me, a retirement home. It's like a hotel."
But finding peace of mind wasn't easy for the 69-year-old trans woman.
Last fall, Frey had to find a new place to live and turned to social workers for help, but she says they had no experience working with trans women. The social workers struggled to find a place for her because of her gender identity, said Frey. Every place they called turned her down.
Her son suggested she call a private agency he had found, which led her to Manoir Casson in the Saint-Laurent borough.
"I still pinch myself. I wake up in the morning and I'm like 'Wow,'" she said.
"There's all these nationalities, all these religions, and it all seems to work. I've never been looked at [with any discrimination] nor does anyone look at each other that way."
Frey says she's aware that LGBT people, and particularly trans people, are often more vulnerable to homelessness. She said she's seen documentaries showing how older trans people were likely to struggle and be lonely and has had negative experiences of her own.
"Being trans now, people say 'Oh it's 2023' but it's not [more accepted]," she said. "Because I'm a baby boomer, it's more difficult because that really wasn't there, everything was hidden at that time."
But she feels she found a haven.
"In my experience being here, I can get on with my life. I have a lot of things I want to do. I'm in the arts … I can do it now because I have peace of mind," she said.
Though the environment at Manoir de Casson is accepting, that isn't the case for every seniors' residence.
Advocates say that, though more people are out of the closet in 2023, for some seniors it's still difficult to be open and proud of their sexual or gender identity.
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