When Emily Doucet took on the role of Seniors Navigator for Nursing Home Without Walls in Bathurst in April of 2025, the program’s funding was secured for just one year, contingent on community participation. Just under a year and a half later, that trial run has earned a four-year funding extension, secured in March of 2026, and on August 26th, Doucet and her team are celebrating with the program’s first-ever Aging Well Community Expo.

The growth over that year and a half has been steady and community-driven. What began as a small offering has expanded to around 150 participants, most of whom connect with the program weekly. Doucet and her team built the program’s calendar directly around what participants asked for, running surveys, testing schedules, and adjusting based on results.

That responsiveness has shaped nearly every service the program now offers. Thursday grocery days replaced daily trips, bundling participants by destination. A subcontracted foot care clinic, discounted and hosted bi-monthly at the villa, filled a need participants raised often. Quarterly dinner dances now regularly fill out a 100-person venue. And when a group of participants reminisced about fishing in their youth, Doucet’s team partnered with a local aquaculture operation to make it happen.

Partnerships with the Bathurst Legion, the Chal Baie Golden Age Club in Beresford, and Ampere Bathurst Makerspace have added weekly and biweekly programming, from Monday Morning Mingles to Technology Tuesdays, where participants learn to navigate email and social media. Monthly Lunch & Learn sessions bring in community resources, including the Bathurst Police Force on scam prevention, paired with a shared meal, addressing both information gaps and isolation at once.

The impact shows up in individual stories. Doucet’s very first participant received home care support through the program until she made the decision, on her own terms, to transition to a Level 2 care home, a move the program helped delay by roughly a year and a half, giving her that much more time living independently.

Now, with four more years of funding secured, Doucet and her team are scaling that success up. The Nursing Home Without Walls Aging Well Community Expo runs Wednesday, August 26th, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., designed to catch early risers, the lunch crowd, and people stopping by after work. The event is open not just to seniors, but to families, caregivers, and anyone navigating aging-related decisions.

Close to 30 vendors and exhibitors are confirmed, including the Alzheimer Society, Mind at Peace Center, IronMind Wellness, multiple home healthcare agencies, the Bathurst Police Force, and Service Canada. Scheduled mini-presentations throughout the day will point visitors toward specific booths, and Mayor Kim Chamberlain will deliver opening remarks. A stamp-collecting “passport” activity will encourage attendees to visit every table, with a prize basket built from vendor donations as the payoff.

For Doucet and her team, the Expo is a natural extension of the program’s mission: helping people age well, stay informed, and stay home as long as possible, by making sure they know what’s actually available to them.

None of this would have been possible without the support behind the scenes. Victor Shea, CEO of Atlantic Baptist Housing, played a major role in securing the four-year funding extension that will keep Nursing Home Without Walls running and growing in the years ahead.

We want to thank Emily Doucet, and Director of Clinical Operations for the Robert & Helen Knowles Memorial Home, Chantal Hanson for telling us all about the great things happening with the Nursing Home Without Walls program. We wish the program continued success.

Well that’s it for another edition of the Northern Heat Report, the place you come to listen to the stories that have not yet been discovered.