Randall and Margaret Moore
For nearly 40 years, Margaret and Randall Moore shared everything—long days in newsrooms as journalists, travels across Europe, quiet mornings at home. Today Randall's life revolves around caring for his wife, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease five years ago.
“We’d gone to see the doctor because she’d been forgetting things—dates, names, moments that mattered to her,” Randall says. “I knew right away there was a problem.”
“She was distraught when we received the diagnosis,” Randall recalls. “And in that moment, I made her a promise: We’re in this together. That’s all I could do. And I’ve tried to live up to that.”
Since then, Randall has learned that caregiving is both a devotion and a discipline.
“Patience is important,” Randall says. “Acceptance, too. I learned that Margaret’s reality isn’t going to change. The only thing that can change is me. So, I have to adapt.”
That adaptability brought him to Providence Healthcare’s Adult Day Program (ADP) and the adjoining caregiver support group at the Scotiabank Learning Centre (SLC). At first, he was skeptical.
“I said to myself: ‘If I never have to go to another meeting for the rest of my life, I’ll die a happy man,’” he laughs. “But I knew nothing about Alzheimer’s. We have no family, no outside help. And the ADP has proven very helpful for me.”
What he found at the ADP was more than practical support—it was community, understanding, and knowledge that helps him support Margaret every day. The ADP’s calm, structured environment gives Margaret purpose and connection; for Randall, it offers something just as vital: time to breathe or to run essential errands.
Next door at the SLC, Randall discovered a space open to everyone, no referral needed, created to support caregivers, families, and community members facing dementia and other life-altering health challenges.
The combination of the ADP and SLC created a lifeline for him. This seamless circle of care—support for both the caregiver and the people they love—is what keeps families like Randall and Margaret’s going.
“I take much more than I give at the support group meetings,” he admits. “Someone might describe what they did for their spouse, and I’ll think to myself—okay, I can use that a little, or I can change that a little, just to see if it helps Margaret.”
He finds comfort in the small mercies—like seeing Margaret laugh as she leaves the ADP.
And he’s deeply grateful for the team at Providence that cares for her and, in many ways, for him too.
“They tell me the ADP is as much for the caregiver as for the person being cared for,” Randall says. “There’s a lot of truth to that.”
Now, more than five years after that diagnosis, Randall is keeping his promise to Margaret.
“I’ve been told I’m doing a great job,” he says modestly. “I always take that with suspicion, but maybe I am. Because I’ve learned. I’ve grown. I’ve had to keep rolling with it. That’s love, isn’t it?”
“After 39 years, I guess I’m just returning the favour to Margaret.”
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