This article originally appeared in the October 2025 edition of CARP Action, a monthly newsletter published by the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP).
CARP FACES: Donalda MacIsaac – A Woman of Substance
by Karen Bliss
Donalda MacIsaac, who sits on the board of the Nova Scotia chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP), has been a lifelong caregiver. From pulling shrapnel from her father’s leg at age 10 (that’s a story you’ll have to ask her about directly) to providing around-the-clock care for her special needs son, home care is her passion, along with a mission to tackle ageism in the healthcare system and, on a more macro level, to change the general perception of what it means to be a senior.
“First of all, I’d like to get rid of the word ‘senior’ because people were more than seniors before they were seniors. Now you get the stamp [of senior] and you lose your identity,” says MacIsaac. “We need to realize the value in every single person regardless of their age, and find out what it is that made them tick? What were you excited about when you were younger?
“Every time we think of seniors, we think of the drain on the healthcare system,” she adds. “We have so many active seniors, I really would like to see the focus on seniors change.”
A CARP board member for the past six years, the mother of four with grown grandchildren advocates for social change in healthcare and co-chairs a health advocacy committee with a focus on home care. On Oct. 6, she participated as a panelist for A Conversation about Aging Well in the Face of Ageism taking place at the Halifax Central Library.
“I always introduce myself as a full-time caregiver,” she says. “I’m the person who shows up for the things that don’t work. I’m very active as a family patient advisor [PFA] in the health system to make sure that lived experience comes to the forefront of helping to improve the system. We can’t improve the health system if we don’t have the voices of the people who have the experience.”
That lived experience comes from the 28 years she cared for her son who needed 24/7 care. He passed away in April, which left a deep and painful hole in MacIsaac’s heart, but a profound sense of purpose to communicate all that she learned from being a mother and full-time caregiver, and ensuring he received the best care possible. This lived experience is of enormous benefit to CARP.
“You learn the importance of caring for a person is more important than you can imagine,” says MacIsaac, who holds a Certificate in Integrated Care from The International Federation For Integrated Care (ITIC).
“When he was 35 months in the hospital, what they told us was they couldn’t justify wasting healthcare dollars on a terminal child. That statement made me know that I will always work for those who have no voice. We must create a healthcare system that reaches out and deals with the most complex and most vulnerable, then the rest of us just walk in. The rest of us have our needs met.”
Born in Halifax, MacIsaac heard countless stories from her mother, who was raised in The Home for Colored Children, a long-shuttered orphanage later the subject of a class action suit for its 50 years of child abuse by the staff. “What I learned from my mother was resilience and survival and caring and how you go forward in life,” she says.
As a child, MacIsaac had her own struggles. She spent her early years in hospital before joining her family, then, due to her quiet nature, she was considered shy by others, but she actually couldn’t hear very well. “I was born with a hearing impairment that wasn’t found until I was 17, so I lost myself in books; books became my friends,” she says. “It wasn’t easy growing up being Black in Nova Scotia, but I always wanted to be the type of person who is kind to somebody else, despite how I was treated.”
While she cared for her son full-time, outside the home, MacIsaac worked in the nonprofit sector on behalf of people of colour, serving as Vice-President of the non-profit Black Beauty Culture Association, and co-founded the QEII Foundation Diversity in Health Care Bursary program.
Now at CARP, she says, “Diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] is very big on our board and making sure that we reach out to different communities. It’s very important that CARP is seen as an organization which reaches out to everybody, not just the elite. So that’s what we work very hard to get away from.”
She co-chaired a community health board for five years and sat for six years. She has been an FPA provincially and sits on the Patient Advisors Network board, which brings patient advisors together from across the country. She says she’s “involved with research projects” at Maritime SPOR SUPPORT Unit (MSSU).
She has witnessed CARP’s advocacy resulting in increased and free access to the RSV (free for seniors 75+) and shingles vaccines (free for seniors 65+), but the board is also proud of its community advocacy, such as collecting financial or non-perishable donations for a food bank for every social or AGM event.
“One of the things that I really would like to see, that our finance committee is pushing, is removing mandatory withdrawals from RRIFs. It’s really putting some pressure on seniors,” MacIsaac says. “I think it’s doable. We just have to have a stronger voice to push for that. The government’s going to get their taxes anyways, but it’s causing some people to come up short with their life savings.
“The second thing I would really like to see is more emphasis put on(fighting) ageism around seniors because it’s becoming very uncomfortable. I was reading an article where the gist of it is that seniors get too many breaks. I always say, ‘Take a step back because you need to start celebrating the seniors for some of the freedoms that you really appreciate. You stand on a lot of seniors’ shoulders.
“We are an organization that really does care for the needs of the older population. Our board is constantly trying to reach out and improve wherever they can improve and our chapter has a good relationship with the government, past and present. You have to start asking the question, ‘What impacts seniors when we wake up in the morning?’ That’s the most important thing. How can we come together as an organization to make life better for all seniors?”
What are MacIsaac’s interests outside of helping others? What does she do for herself?
“You mean, what am I going to start doing for myself?” she replies. “The loss of my son is very big and that’s one of the things that we tend to not recognize, especially for seniors when there’s a loss. There’s a hole; here’s a big gap. And, after a month or two, they expect you to go on with your life because their life’s gone on. It’s hard. It’s not that easy to pick up and do that because it’s very present with you.
“And so, a friend of mine, she’s a bird watcher and she wanted to take me out. One thing I discovered, I’m way too hyper for that, but I loved doing photography. I’ve always taken pictures. I’ve been studying every camera. So that’s my goal, to do some photography where I can just lose myself in a different mental space. I think that’s very important.”
The Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) is a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for financial security, improved health care and freedom from ageism for Canadians as we age. With over 255,000 members and 24 chapters across Canada, CARP advocates on behalf of older Canadians with all levels of government and collaborates with other organizations on health, ageism, housing and financial issues. To join or learn more, visit CARP.ca