Party like it’s 1921

Reaching a century (plus five) is a milestone so rare it deserves more than a single celebration.

And Edith Cecelia Lints Edmundson is marking her 105th birthday with a bang, returning to celebrate in the province where she lived for 100 years.

With the help of her children Vivian, Rhonda and Derrick, Edmundson organized a four-day cross-country tour that’s seen her party in Langley, B.C., Shoal Lake and Brandon.

She’ll be capping the festivities off in Winnipeg this weekend, joined by 80 of her nearest and dearest who will come to raise a glass to the matriarch of the family.

As her family prepares the cakes and decorations for Saturday night’s party, Edmundson is positive and buoyant, looking forward to reconnecting with family and friends.

There were 118 people at her first celebration in B.C. where she has lived with her daughter Rhonda and grandson Jonathan for the last four years after moving from Shoal Lake to Langley.

“It was lovely, because I could see my relatives and friends I hadn’t seen and have them all in one place,” Edmundson says. “I have friends and relatives in all these places.”

Born on June 4, 1921, on a remote farmstead 10 kilometres north of Isabella in western Manitoba, Edmundson comes from an era where homes were illuminated by fire, and survival, especially during bitter Prairie winters, depended on coal.

“My parents were young. They lived in a granary for six months and they had a house ordered from the T. Eaton catalogue in Winnipeg,” Edmundson recalls.

Preframed timber and separate windows were shipped to the nearest town of Birtle, 20 kilometres away, where a construction manager hauled the pieces by wagon and assembled the house on the family compound.

A few months later, with the assistance of her grandmother and a Dr. Fraser, who had driven 50 kilometres on dirt roads from Miniota in a horse and buggy, Edmundson was born to Crawford Lints and Margretta Kelly.

As a child, she would help her father take the farm animals to agricultural fairs and learned how to tell the difference between a wild oat and a young onion when weeding the garden with her mother.

Gardening wasn’t the only thing she learned from her mom.

Margretta Kelly was an accomplished pianist and music teacher with a degree from Brandon University and, under her mother’s tutelage, Edmundson’s musical talent flourished. Before long she was playing hymns at the local church during services.

“My mother drove a buggy around the area and taught music lessons to the neighbour kids. The first hymn I learned to play was Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam. I was maybe 10 years old,” she says.

Sunday church services were held in the one-room Rothesay School, which Edmundson attended from grades 1 to 8; it doubled as church on Sunday. There were 45 students in her class, all of whom she remained friends with throughout the years.

When her formal elementary school education ended, Edmundson took correspondence courses from grades 9 to 11 to obtain her high school diploma.

She would dedicate time to study her mailed provincial lesson packages at home, often balancing her schoolwork around her chores, which included tending to the family’s purebred Yorkshire pigs, turning the manual hair clippers by hand to trim the heavy coats of 16 working horses and — her most loathed task — cleaning lamp glasses.

“Because they were turned up high at night so we could have better light to see, carbon would accumulate on the glass globe, which had to be cleaned with a newspaper every morning,” Edmundson says.

“And I hated having to do that. So when I was able to flip a switch and have light, it was a marvellous feat; it was wonderful.”

The modern luxury only arrived for Edmundson in 1956 when she moved from the countryside to Shoal Lake with her husband Arthur and the children.

Edmundson met Arthur in 1939 after being introduced by mutual friends. The young sweethearts, both in their early 20s, would attend country dances, go on picnics and watch movies together at the local cinema.

“I loved all the movies. I never got to see a movie until I was 18 because my mother was a strict Presbyterian. The first movie I ever saw was Gone With the Wind in Birtle. It was four hours long and it was very much worth waiting for,” Edmundson recalls.

They were married on Sept. 30, 1943, and continued to be regular cinema-goers, especially after moving to Shoal Lake, 100 kilometres northwest of Brandon.

“They were only around 50 or 75 cents to get into and afterwards I’d go and have an ice cream. It wasn’t as expensive as it is today,” she says with a laugh.

Arthur worked as a weed supervisor in Shoal Lake, while Edmundson settled into a life of domesticity, staying home to raise their three children. When she was not busy sewing the family’s garments, embroidering, cooking or baking, she would take on seasonal shifts at the local post office.

An active member of the community, she enjoyed entertaining seniors with her piano playing and organized singalongs. She also regularly played the organ for the Anglican Church and was in a local dance orchestra, the Keystone 5, playing in different halls in the area.

“I was quite busy with all the musical places and also being at home to be there for my children,” she says. “They always knew there was going to be a meal on the table for them.

“We spent a lot of time at the rink; my oldest girl was a curler, the next girl was a figure skater and my son played hockey.”

Every summer the family would rent a cabin on Silver Beach or Salt Lake, in western Manitoba, where they would swim, play lots of board games and play cards.

Life chugged along pleasantly until Arthur’s death in 1983 at 65.

Edmundson, 62 at the time, was about to embark on one of the most challenging periods of her life.

“It was sudden — it was a blood clot that caused it. He was only just getting his first old-age cheques. That was a bad day; it was a bad year. I really had to pull myself together and I didn’t, I couldn’t,” she said.

“My favourite aunt, her name was Edna, was a real strong person for me for quite a few years. She made me so I could face life today as it is.”

And face it she did.

She continued to drive her own car — a skill she first learned in 1945 when she had to drive into Winnipeg — right up to 2022, when she relocated to B.C. at the age of 101. She would shuttle younger seniors to their medical appointments until her retirement from the road.

She credits her community work, her children and her late husband for keeping her young at heart.

“He did all the worrying, so I didn’t have to, and that helps keep you young,” she says with a chuckle. “He was a good manager; he knew what life was about a bit more than I did.”

At 105, Edmundson’s life remains anchored by routine. She continues to have a cup of coffee daily at 2 p.m. and is an insatiable reader, devouring fiction and non-fiction alike.

She is currently working her way through her latest read: Canada’s Main Street, a chronicle the construction of the Trans-Canada Highway, a road she herself has driven multiple times on trips to Ontario, B.C. and down into the United States, quite often on her own.

“That never bothered me,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve driven many times through the mountains.”

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