Living with Dementia: The Collected Columns of Darce Fardy

The collected columns from former reporter and head of CBC current affairs, illuminating his experience following a dementia diagnosis.

In 2013 Darce Fardy was diagnosed with dementia. He was eighty-one years old.

Fardy did not let the diagnosis get him down. Not only did he accept the situation and the likely consequences; he practically embraced them. As a former journalist, it was natural for him to document his experience. Over the next six years, almost seventy of his columns were published in the Halifax Chronicle Herald, serving as a window on his deteriorating condition.

But the columns revealed something else: the extent to which dementia touched other people's lives. Everyone seemed to have a story about a loved one who was dealing with some form of dementia―and readers were grateful for his insights.

Fardy kept writing until early 2020, when his ability to piece together a five hundred?word essay was finally out of reach. He died two years later.

Here, Fardy's columns have been compiled into a poignant and illuminating collection that serves to both honour him and destigmatize the disease. Published in cooperation with the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia, Living with Dementia features forty black-and-white photos, a foreword and several columns by prominent Halifax geriatrician Dr. Kenneth Rockwood, and practical guidance from the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia.

Royalties from the sale of Living with Dementia will be donated to the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia.

Darce Fardy (1932-2022) was a long-time reporter, producer, and head of current affairs with CBC Television. His "retirement" after almost forty years with the CBC did not last long. Over the next thirty years he dedicated himself to two important causes near and dear to his heart: one, the right to access information held by publicly accountable bodies, serving as the first review officer overseeing the Nova Scotia Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The second, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2013, was helping others come to terms with the daily challenges of living with dementia.