The Journal · The Brantford Club

Hobbies After 50: The Ones That Come With People Attached

The best hobbies after 50 are the ones with company built in: a standing table, a walking group, a service club, a course, a club evening. Research keeps finding that the people are the active ingredient; a meta-analysis of 148 studies tied stronger social ties to a 50 percent higher likelihood of survival. Brantford keeps several of the peopled kind, and one house has kept them since 1898.

Lists of hobbies for people over fifty are one of the internet’s renewable resources: birdwatching, sourdough, watercolours, the usual suspects. They are fine lists. What they rarely say is the thing the research says loudest, that the value of a pastime divides sharply by whether anyone else is in the room. This entry is the missing half of those lists: not what to do with your hours, but which versions of it come with people attached, and where in Brantford the peopled versions live.

Why the People Are the Active Ingredient

The evidence is unusually blunt for social science. The 2010 meta-analysis in PLoS Medicine, pooling 148 studies, found people with stronger social relationships had a 50 percent higher likelihood of survival over the study periods, an effect its authors compared to quitting smoking. Statistics Canada reported in 2021 that more than 1 in 10 Canadians aged 15 and over feel lonely always or often. And the Harvard Study of Adult Development, running since 1938, compresses eight decades into its director’s sentence: “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.” None of this is medical advice, and a hobby is not a prescription; it is simply the honest context for choosing one. A solitary pastime rests you. A peopled one, the research suggests, keeps you.

The Four Peopled Kinds

Where the Peopled Versions Live in Brantford

Honestly: in more places than one. The trails are free and open at both ends of every day. The city’s service clubs have been absorbing capable people for a century and are glad of hands. The campus downtown keeps talks and courses within a walk of the market square. And at 98 George Street, The Brantford Club has run the standing-table version since 1898: lunches, club evenings, dinners with a theme, Cocktail Fridays in the 98 George Room, a calendar that expects you back. A club is not itself a hobby; it is the room where the peopled kind happen on schedule, which is why the roll has always carried people whose calendars emptied and who decided not to let the company empty with them.

A hobby fills the hours; company returns them.

Questions readers ask about hobbies after 50

Sources: Holt-Lunstad et al., PLoS Medicine (2010) · Statistics Canada, Canadian Social Survey (2021) · Harvard Study of Adult Development. Related: what the research says about belonging · the third place.