Articles: 2003

Submitted by Wilf Garrah
Transcribed by Jerry Vaughn
Kingston Whig Standard
Date 2003
‘Hard work, good food,’ secret to 106-year-old’s life
By Ian MacAlpine
Whig-Standard Staff Writer
IMAGE
Elsie Keyes was feeling a little bit spoiled yesterday.
Spoiled because she received many cards, flowers and letters and a little party was being held in her honour.
The party marked her 106th birthday.
“I never got spoiled at home but they are sure spoiling me here,” said Keyes, in an interview at Fairfield Manor East on Gore Road yesterday afternoon.
About 30 family and friends attended the party, including three of her four children.
Her daughter, Win, and sons Lorne and Ken were in attendance. Her other son Arthur is vacationing in Newfoundland and Labrador. Ken Keyes is a former Kingston mayor and Liberal MPP for Kingston and the Islands.
Elsie Keyes was born in 1897 on a farm. She married farmer John Keyes and spent most of her life on Wolfe Island.
Ken Keyes said his mother worked hard around the home raising her four children and some grandchildren when her daughter-in-law went back to teach school.
“Nowadays you’d call it a homemaker” said Ken Keyes of the mother’s duties.
According to Elsie Keyes she also milked hundreds of cows.
Mrs. Keyes only started enjoying the convenience of electricity in the late 1940’s. Before that, everything was cooked on a wood stove and outdoor toilet facilities were the norm.
Her husband died 30 years ago and she lived in her farmhouse until she was 92. She moved into Kingston and lived in an apartment by herself until she turned 102.
She is in good condition but is now unable to walk. Still, she carries on great conversations with visitors as long as they speak loudly and clearly into her left ear.
Her son Lorne said she has only slowed down a little bit over the last few years.
“Until she was in her 90s, it was hard to detect any change in her energy level,” he said.
One of the highlights of her life was meeting Queen Elizabeth at the opening ceremonies for the sailing events in Kingston at the 1976 Summer Olympics. Her son Ken was mayor of the city at the time.
“There was never an idle minute,” she said of her life.
She now enjoys braiding round and octagon-shaped rugs that she gives to family and friends.
She credits her longevity to “hard work and good food.”
And of course, no smoking or drinking.
She notes that she ate a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables.
“We didn’t eat anything out of a tin can,” she said.
With the exception, said son Ken Keyes, of salmon and canned peas in the winter.
“They say my work isn’t done here yet, so I don’t know what else I have to do,” said the Keyes matriarch.
Elsie Keyes has 14 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, Benjamin Cooper, born in England on July 29.

From Sharon Compeau
From:Kingston Whig Standard
Date: Monday, April 7, 2003
Island toughness' helps man turn 100
Herbert Armstrong swears there's no secret to living 100 years. But his daughter Anna Bell knows better. Wolfe Island can add extra years to anyone's life, she says. "They're tough people, islanders," Bell says. "It's the island toughness, and being in touch with the earth and the seasons."

On Saturday, practically the entire island travelled to Kingston's Trillium Ridge Retirement Centre to celebrate Armstrong passing the century mark. And besides bringing cake and gifts, Armstrong's family and former neighbours brought troves of stories and memories of his life as a dairy farmer on the island just south of Kingston's shores. "I never figured on anything special," Armstrong says, as familiar faces walk into the seniors home to say hello and congratulate him on a feat that few people live to accomplish.

The one unfortunate thing about living to such a ripe old age, is that most of the people you remember best aren't alive to share it with you, Armstrong says.

Looking through old black and white photographs of his wife Mary, who died in 1999, and his old hunting buddies, who have also died, Armstrong begins to reminisce.

"I knew a lot of people on the island. Now it's changed and a lot of people have moved on," he says, as his family members flip the pages of a photo album.

"There's quite a few families I miss." The year Armstrong was born, 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright performed their first famed flight in a motorized aircraft and Vladimir Lenin created the Bolshevik party that would eventually launch a revolution and form the communist government of the Soviet Union.

Crooner and Oscar winner Bing Crosby shares a 1903 birth year with Herbert Armstrong, as does George Orwell, the British author of renowned novels 1904 and Animal Farm.

When Armstrong was born on the island, it was a very different settling, he says. Driving across the ice to the mainland was commonplace, and the tiny community was still 40 years away from hydroelectric power.

He inherited the family farm, which he used mostly to raise dairy cows, as well as some beef cattle and strawberries during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

Besides raising two successful daughters, Anna, 58 and Shirley Winter, 54, Armstrong spent his spare time hunting fox and deer, as well as fishing for muskies in Lake Ontario.

He regularly attended services at Wolfe Island United Church, and he gives partial credit to his disciplined lifestyle for his longevity. He never smoked or drank alcohol. I didn't need those things. I could do without them, "he says.

He kept farming until he was older than 80 years old, but when he caught pneumonia two years ago, he had to sell the 43 hectares - on the southern part of the island - that had been in his family for two generations. "I was doing all right until I took sick and got knocked out," he says.

The party at the home was a nice way to celebrate the day, he says, but the day would have been perfect if he could have spent it on Wolfe Island. "this not home to me," Armstrong says.
(written by Greg McArthur)

Submitted by Wilf Garrah
Kingston Whig Standard
Apr 28 2003
Pg 2 of Private Ferry Provides Tourism Link to Kingston-Horne Ferry
Another photo from this article..

The Islands: Articles: 2003