Formula for Longevity (drink beer)

"If you're old you're old, if you're young you're young. What can you do about it? If every year I get a year older, you can't do anything about it. You might as well just go along with it."
Merle Barwis, Victoria British Columbia

Not quite pearls of wisdom, but what the hell! Resigned to the reality of life at a hugely advanced age, a woman given the title of Canada's oldest citizen, shrugs off her age and simply gets on with her life. "It's a fairly routine type of existence, and unfortunately her eyesight's gone so she can't read any more. But she seems to just get along", states her 67-year-old grandson.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa on December 23, 1900, as Merle Emeline Stedwell, she was raised in Saskatchewan on a homestead her parents settled as migrants to Canada on the Canadian prairie. "You get her talking and she's got a great sense of humour", though her advanced age is "starting to catch up with her, for sure", as she is now "not quite as animated", as formerly.

Guess not. She is the oldest living Canadian, and has been since the death of another 113-year-old living in Medicine Hat, Alberta. She is now 13th on the global list of super-centenarians. She has over 40 descendants, most living in British Columbia where she and her late husband retired to in the 1950s.

Her recommendation for a long life? "To keep busy and mind your own business." As per her advice, one supposes that's just what should be done; busily mind one's own business; classy photo, right?

Merle Barwis, who turned 113 in December, on Monday became the oldest British Columbian ever. She is pictured enjoying a beer with family in Victoria on her 111th brithday. File photo. (LYLE STAFFORD, TIMES COLONIST).

Check.

Statistics Canada released figures in May 2012 synthesized from 2011 census data to the effect that there were 5,825 people in the country whose age is one hundred or more; an increase of roughly 1,200 since the previously-published national head count that took place in 2006. A continuous rise in the country's centenarian population is predicted by StatsCan officials for the next 50 years, thanks to the baby-boomer contingent.