One of the things we know generally, in rural Canada, is that older adults who are quite frail and need high levels of care often go sooner into a nursing home than would those in urban areas, and that's primarily because they can't get the community services.
It is true, and certainly we've found in our own work, that the smaller the community, the more likely it is that people in the community will be helping out. Whether that's done out of virtue and community cohesiveness or out of sheer necessity is hard to know for sure. But there is a sense that rural communities are particularly cohesive and supportive to older adults. And in many cases, that's absolutely correct.