Bob Nelson doesn’t measure a volunteer drive by its distance.
One person may need a ride just down the road. Another may need to travel to Moncton for a medical appointment. To Nelson, both trips matter for the same reason.
“That one kilometre to that person meant just as much as the 110 kilometres did to the other person,” he said. “You gotta look at it that way. It’s not how far and how long, it’s that you did it.”
Nelson was among the volunteers helping nearly 250 seniors gather Thursday at Trueman Blueberry Farm in Aulac for Nursing Home Without Walls’ annual summer social. Train rides circled the property while neighbours caught up over ice cream and live music.
The event was meant to bring people together. Throughout the afternoon, however, conversations with organizers, volunteers and seniors kept returning to one topic: transportation.
For many older adults, getting to a medical appointment or even a community event often depends on someone else being able to drive.
Rachelle Gariepy sees that regularly as coordinator of Nursing Home Without Walls in Tantramar.
The program, based at Drew Nursing Home, helps older adults remain in their own homes through wellness programs and community supports. Gariepy said transportation has become one of the biggest barriers to accessing those services.
“Transportation in rural areas, it’s more than just getting to point A to point B,” Gariepy said. “It’s for seniors or older adults, it’s independence, it’s reducing isolation, connecting to people, being able to access crucial medical health services.”
Many of the seniors she works with no longer drive. Others depend on family members whose schedules don’t always allow them to help.
“In this role as Nursing Home Without Walls coordinator, it’s become apparent there’s a gap in transportation services,” she said. “A lot of seniors are relying on friends and family to get to medical appointments or to run their errands. For a number of reasons, they may not be driving any longer.”
For Gariepy, transportation has become one of the issues she hears about most often.
“I spend a lot of time with seniors, and it is the number one requirement for aging in place,” she said. “Living well at home necessitates being able to get your drives to medical appointments. This is absolutely essential. It’s from everyone I speak with. It’s not just my own observation.”
Transportation is not Nursing Home Without Walls’ primary role. The program exists to help older adults remain independent through community supports, but until broader transportation options exist, it has increasingly found itself helping fill that gap.
In June alone, Nursing Home Without Walls staff and volunteers travelled a combined 2,113 kilometres transporting clients. That total does not include rides provided through Urban Rural Rides when Nursing Home Without Walls volunteers were unavailable.
Nursing Home Without Walls isn’t the only organization seeing the issue.
Urban Rural Rides provides volunteer transportation throughout southeastern New Brunswick, taking people to medical appointments, food banks and other essential destinations. Many specialized healthcare services require Tantramar residents to travel to Moncton or Halifax for specialist appointments, diagnostic testing and some surgeries.
For people who no longer drive, getting to those appointments often depends on someone else being available to take them.
Executive director Kelly Taylor said the lack of public transportation leaves many residents with few alternatives.
“Without that type of service, if you don’t have family and you don’t have neighbours that can drive you, or your adult children can’t take any more days off work to make sure that you get to these appointments, it really leaves you stuck without options,” Taylor said. “Because there is no other form of public accessible transportation that will take you from the Tantramar region into the urban area.”
For Len Corkum, volunteer transportation has become an essential part of accessing healthcare.
“I have a lot of eye surgeries, so I use the transportation to get me to Halifax for eye surgery and Moncton,” he said. “With Urban Rural Rides and with the riders that provide here for the nursing home, it’s really, really good.”
According to the municipality of Tantramar, Urban Rural Rides is currently the only transportation service operating in the region beyond taxis. The municipality’s 2025–2028 strategic plan calls for working with community partners to research and design a Transportation Master Plan addressing scalable transit, mobility and active transportation. The plan identifies that work as a priority for 2027 and beyond.
Until then, volunteers are continuing to fill the gap.
For Nelson, that’s never really been the point.
“I’m sitting here reading a book,” he said. “If I wasn’t sitting here reading a book waiting for you, I’d be sitting at home reading a book.”
“Let’s get you here, and let’s get you back home,” he said. “That’s the important part.”
