RE:RE:RE:RE:general stock comment I can chime with with my wife's and my investments...this isn't advice, just telling our story!
We retired early, we don't qualify or cpp or OAS and don't want to drain rrsp's until we have to, so we are living entirely off dividends. We have about 30 stocks, mostly low risk bank, pipeline, telecom and utilities (apparently AQN wasn't one of the low risk ones!). We have a number of oil stocks paying special dividends (lovely gifts!). We get more than enough from our dividends to live on, average yield without the special dividends is about 5.4%.
The best thing is the preferred tax treatment of dividends over other forms of income!
It works for us.