Happy 107th for Flora

Flora Mercer can remember the Titanic’s maiden voyage and when her youngest brother was born the same month as the Queen. Saturday marked Flora’s 107th birthday. Halton’s oldest resident celebrated the milestone Wednesday at the Burloak Long-Term Care Centre.

Flora is not only healthy enough to stand on her own to blow out her birthday candles, at 107, she cuts her own cake and eats it too: “The day that I was born was like this. A very stormy day.”

Born in Newfoundland, Flora remembers growing up and the beauty of the province: “Doesn’t seem that long to me. I can remember things way, way back. I feel like I was there yesterday.”

Just don’t ask her the secret to longevity: “I wish I could tell people that because quite a few people keep asking me. But I can’t think of one thing to tell them.”

Keeping fit by exercising about 6 times a day can’t hurt. Lou Fiorito is Flora’s nurse: “She goes on the bars and she does pullups and kind of pushups and the elastic band for the legs.”

Flora’s nurse says her positive attitude makes her an inspiration: “Flora is amazing. She doesn’t complain about anything. Everything is great when you ask her ‘how are you doing Flora’, she says ‘everything is fine.”

Flora says: “Well, think of what’s going to happen to you when you turn 107. You’ll be having all this.”

Flora, we can only hope.

Flora met her husband in 1948 while hanging out with a group of friends. They were married for 21 years until he passed away in 1971. She’s been at Burloak for 10 years and employees there say she enjoys baking, knitting and bingo.