Overview:
Canadian Affairs has been taking a critical look at five Canadian cities to see how they stack up as Blue Zones. Simply put, Blue Zones are places where people eat simple food, move a lot during their days and live close to loved ones with whom they eat, laugh and perhaps pray.
Mayor Peter Brown and all of Airdrie, Alberta, had a dream. A big blue dream.
The dream was this: that Airdrie, a city of 80,000 just 37 kilometres north of Calgary, would be the first Canadian municipality to turn itself into a Blue Zone. Blue Zones are sites around the world where people regularly live to 100, healthy to their last day.
Pretty much everyone was on board. School divisions, city government, the non-profits, businesses big and small. Council ponied up $1 million, a foundation raised more. They were ready to go.
“We looked at what some of the communities in the US were doing, and there were quite a few of them,” Brown said. “They were incorporating what they thought would be improved health for the people in the community… After hearing them present and some of the successes that happened in the US, we said, ‘Yep, we’re in.’”
And then Covid happened.
You can guess the rest.
“We were hoping to be that community that showcased it for the rest of the country,” Brown said. “There were so many great things that had started. And then unfortunately, Covid. And everything kind of went by the wayside.”
Which is a shame. Adopting the principles of the Blue Zones — the original five are: Ikaria, Greece; Loma Linda, California; Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Nicoya, Costa Rica — reaps great health benefits for residents of municipalities that adopt them. Brown said Airdrie expected to save $50 million in healthcare costs within five years.
Why do the Blue Zone principles work where other health-improvement plans fail? It’s simple. You create an environment that makes it easy to make good decisions about how to live.
We all know what healthy decisions we should make. Eat fresh, healthy food, enjoy time with family and friends, find a purpose in life and move more. And yet we don’t do these things. But if you could create an environment that made it easier to make good decisions than to make bad ones, the kind of environment that naturally occurs in Blue Zones, you’d have real change. You’d have better health outcomes.
Brown puts it this way. “Everybody thinks, ‘Well, you just end up with disease if you’re predisposed.’ But that’s not true. If you live a healthier lifestyle, etc. you can actually slow it down or even stop it from ever hitting you. That’s not the case for everyone, obviously. People’s personal health is very different and unique. But from the majority perspective, all the data that we read was, you’d live a longer, healthier, happier life.”
That was Airdrie’s goal. But all is not lost for the good citizens of this city just because they could not complete their Blue Zone project. Airdrie has a lot going for it, Blue Zone style.
First there’s the pathways. Every neighbourhood is connected by a pathway. It’s one of the prerequisites for developers in Airdrie. They must create connections to the integrated pathway system. People can park their car and still manage to go to work and do their errands using the paths.
“Sometimes it’s minus 35 and you might not want to do it,” Brown admits. “But you could.”
The city has strong social supports. That impressed Brown, who grew up in Oakville, Ontario, when he arrived in the city in 2002. “When I moved here… I’d never before seen such a rallying spirit. If someone falls down, there’s a lot of people there to pick them up. It’s quite remarkable.”
One place that feature shows up is with addictions. Airdrie has fewer addiction-related issues than larger cities, Brown says. “I believe that has a lot to do with the school system, the community that they’re raised in and the support systems that are available… Again, we’re looking out for each other.”
That spills over into mental health, he says. For a long time, the municipality’s focus, like many other municipalities, has been on safety and security. But Airdrie also puts resources into the soft services. “If people are struggling, we need to know. We have lots of [mental health] resources to support them. Lots of people, when they are struggling, they don’t reach out.” Brown says once people do reach out, they can get an appointment with a health care provider in 24 hours.
But the goal is to keep people healthy before they are struggling. And Brown believes Airdrie has the secret sauce. He tells the story of a newcomer to the city — a transplant from Toronto — who told him over coffee one day that he was blown away when a neighbour walked across the street to welcome him. “He said to me, ‘You know, this is the first community I’ve ever moved in where that’s happened.’ That seems to be the essence of, you know, looking out for one another.”
I think Brown may be right. Airdrie just may have the Blue Zone secret sauce. You talk to Brown and that small town-caring comes through. He ends our call like this:
“I really appreciate your call and good luck with your article. I hope it inspires people to get involved and get healthy.”
That is so incredible! It is my dream to live in The Blue Zone Town
I believe it is possible to make my town Hope, BC one of the small blue zone projects – it’s statistics from 2021 states about 6686 of inhabitants in a various age groups. Also known for 3 major highways crossing their paths there hwy 1,3 and 5 and has it’s own hospital that almost got shut down due to cuts in a health care system but fantastic community effort kept it going although reduced to 10 beds but still strong! It is a beautiful town with amazing community who celebrates every year another anniversary of making “Rambo First Blood” – this year it will be 42 years! We hope to see Sylvester Stallone this time – he always remembers to send us a message! I believe in my dream to make my town, Hope, the Blue Zone town!
Thank you for your comment. I would say your town has the right name to become a Blue Zone. That is another characteristic I notice in Blue Zones: the people are anything but hopeless.
Hi Julie. We are located between Beaumont and Edmonton. Planning to establish a Blue Zone community from scratch. Can we contact you for a short introduction?
I was introduced to this article by an English teacher who was presenting the topic in a conversation class where we were discussing health habits. I really appreciate the article!
After thinking about it, I started wondering if this would work in larger cities, or in a country like Brazil—or somewhere else in South America.