Wilf Harris, who turns 100 on March 13, walks and golfs daily, does his own cooking and makes regular visits to the casino.Photo: Glenn Baglo / Vancouver Sun
BURNABY, Vancouver (The Vancouver Sun), March 10, 2008:
On the day we visited Wilf Harris, there was an ambulance at the front door of his building.
This is a fairly common occurrence at his building, Wilf said - he lives in Seton Villa, a seniors' residence in Burnaby. It is a highrise in the Capitol Hill area, and Wilf lives on the 16th floor. He has a good view of the North Shore. He has lived there in the same apartment since his retirement at age 66. That was 33 years ago.
He will be 100 in two days. An ambulance has yet to come for him.
"This place is not as good as it used to be," Wilf said. "Now, it's all old people in wheelchairs or walkers."
Wilf does not use a wheelchair or walker. He is one of those old people who, when speaking of old people, means someone other than himself.
"I walk every morning," Wilf said, "four or five miles a day. If it's raining like it is today, I'll go upstairs and use the treadmills or the bikes or the rowing machines, and God knows what else."
He is 5'5", a compact bantamweight.
He is hale, without any of the pale brittleness of the very old. His spine gives him a bit of trouble, he said, and he suffers from occasional indigestion, and he has a touch of arthritis in one finger, the result of a baseball injury. But other than that, he said, he's fine.
"I've kept myself in darn good shape pretty nearly all my life. I was a member of the YMCA for 35 years. And I weight-lifted, and was an instructor for body building for about six years.
"And I still play golf. I've golfed for quite a number of years. When the weather settles down a bit and the fairways dry out, I'll be out again. The lady at the pitch and putt in Rupert Park tells me when I reach 100, I can play there for free."
He was born in Brandon, Man., in a time when there were still sod huts on the prairie.
His parents had emigrated from Lebanon and changed the family name from Nasrahla to Harris. There were seven kids in the family - three boys in succession, and then four girls - and Wilf was the eldest.
The family won the gene pool. Longevity runs in it. Except for a brother who died of Parkinson's five years ago, all of his siblings are still alive. The youngest of them, Wilf figures, would be around 88 or 89. His mother died when she was 92, and his father at 94.
"And my mother had sisters who were twins, and one died at age 103 and the other died at age 105."
He was 34 when he joined up for the Second World War. He was deemed fit enough for the infantry, but his age got him placed in an ordinance company. He got sent to Europe, survived some near misses and ended the war in Holland.
After the war, he found work warehousing at a navy depot on Burrard Inlet, and then at Canada Post, where he retired. He moved into Seton Villa.
"When the building was originally built, it was about half men and half women. And we would go all over the place, Reno, Las Vegas . . . Now, you're lucky of you find a couple dozen men in this building."
He never married. The women in the building, he said, "drive him nuts." He cooks his own meals - always a roast or something pressure-cooked, never anything fried. He neither smokes nor drinks - he gave both up in his youth. His diet was Mediterranean before the health movement discovered it: he eats "12 to 16 grapes" and half an apple every morning, and the same every afternoon. He snacks on nuts and the occasional piece of chocolate. He drinks cranberry juice and pomegranate juice. He prefers his life, he admits, to be one of habit.
He is asked if he has lived a happy life.
"As for as I know, I have," Wilf said. "At least, I don't know of anything to make me think otherwise."
He does not think about death, he said.
"If I do die, it doesn't worry me. If I had died in the war, well, then, that would have been fate, I guess.
"But I'm going to tell you a little story, and you can choose to believe it or not.
"I was standing between those two beds one day (he points to the twin beds in his room), waiting to go out somewhere, and a voice said to me:
"'Wilf, you're going to live to be 102.'"
"Where it came from or why," Wilf said, "God only knows."
By Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun
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