Today is your day Boomer! This is a picture of me and my FIVE brothers and sisters! So, a family of six kids, all Baby Boomers, born after World War II when the economy was prospering and it was "normal" to have big families. In fact, I have a friend who came from a family of 10 kids born on the Canadian prairies....where you had alot of children to help work on the farms. Canada's fertility rate was 3.9 in 1959 for each woman; today, it is 1.5 which means many new families are very small or even childless. Too bad, I say, as I help plan a big weekend fishing trip with my siblings this spring! And what it means for Canada is this: we need a fertility rate of 2.1 to replenish our population and this hasn't happened since 1971! It means we must bring in immigrants to reach that goal, so we do at a rate of about 375,000 last year. For example, a Sudanese family recently moved to my community from Africa after spending many difficult years in a relief camp.....they have seven kids! For us Boomers, it likely means fewer grandchildren around us and more retirement time spend with people our own age. It probably also means less babysitting and more time spent reading social media blogs like this one......Cheers!

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