The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent state of public emergency have significantly affected older adults in Canada and worldwide. It is imperative that the gerontological response be efficient and effective. In this statement, the board members of the Canadian Association on Gerontology/L’Association canadienne de gérontologie (CAG/ACG) and the Canadian Journal on Aging/La revue canadienne du vieillissement (CJA/RCV) acknowledge the contributions of CAG/ACG members and CJA/RCV readers. We also profile the complex ways that COVID-19 is affecting older adults, from individual to population levels, and advocate for the adoption of multidisciplinary collaborative teams to bring together different perspectives, areas of expertise, and methods of evaluation in the COVID-19 response.

This article is based on a study of older Canadian widows, supplemented by ongoing work with widowers. Twenty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted in New Brunswick with women over fifty whose husbands had died within the past seven years. Most of the widows did not wish to remarry because they felt they had already had the best possible husband, had suffered with his loss, and did not want to schedule their lives around a new husband. Cautionary tales about the risks of remarriage were widespread. Norms regarding interactions between men and women are ambiguous, the motives of men are not always clear, and changed sexual mores present challenges as do the reactions of adult children to a potential relationship. Widows often need to find creative new ways to interact safely with men in order to avoid misunderstandings both about their interest in remarriage or their desire or lack of desire to engage in intimate activity. The article includes a discussion also of widowers' attitudes towards repartnering. "Marry in haste; repent at leisure." Is there any doubt that the widow who shared this sentiment with me felt that the preferable and safer thing to do after losing a spouse is to remain single? It is 'common knowledge' in Canada that older women who become widowed are unlikely to remarry while men are both more likely to marry and to marry quickly, too quickly some would say. This article looks primarily at the first part of the equation, widows' attitudes towards remarriage and relationships with men.The data for this paper come from a qualitative study that examined the social meaning of widowhood from the perspective of the women who experienced it. There were three parts to the study: in-depth interviews with twentyeight women in New Brunswick, Canada ranging in age from fifty-three to eighty-seven who had been widowed within the previous five years; observa-

This article adds to research on retirement communities, which has primarily looked at them at one stage in their development and assumed that a homogeneous population as a background variable contributes to high levels of social integration and a strong sense of community. It presents the situation of three groups who live in a 10-year-old Florida retirement community-snowbirds, newcomers, and widows and widowers. Members of these three groups live on the social margins of the community. The article examines both the structures within the community and the social processes that create an invisible boundary that puts marginal residents on the outside. It concludes that increasing diversity is inevitable and that homogeneity or lack thereof is in the eye of the beholder. Findings are based on participant observation and in-depth interviews.

This article addresses the issue of the loss of identity a woman experiences when she becomes a widow. Based on an analysis of published autobiographical accounts of widowhood, it looks at how women express their experience of losing their husbands. It explicates a process of ‘identity foreclosure’ which strips a woman of her identity at every level, and the process by which the authors of these accounts have built new identities. Extensive quoting from the published accounts reveals the richness of these data and provides a feeling for the emotional impact of widowhood that women experience.