This paper explores the extent to which a correspondence exists between academic theories and public perceptions concerning the role of volunteers and voluntary organizations in ageing communities. Drawing on local print media as a key source of information on public discourse, and with reference to an existing theorization of voluntarism, we analyze daily newspaper coverage of voluntary sector involvement in community care, long-term care, and health system restructuring in a mid-size Canadian city in the 2000s. The findings reveal how the link between voluntarism and ageing in place is portrayed in public discourse, how this portrayal fits with the prevailing academic conceptions of voluntarism as a ‘space of resistance’, and how the local print media helps shape discourse on voluntarism in ageing communities. The evident risk within the academic literature of overtheorizing voluntarism beyond its documented significance and the tendencies within public discourse to romanticize volunteers and voluntary organizations are problematized, and the implications for developing informed policy in ageing communities are discussed.
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