Alice McMillan has some pretty simple advice if you want to make it to 104: “you’ve got to smile.”
Alice, who has lived in the same house on Lyon Avenue in Guelph for 76 years, turned 104 on Wednesday.
Bed ridden but sharp as a tack, she enjoyed birthday cake, chatted with the many family and friends who stopped by and sipped on some ice tea.
What, no scotch?
“That’s later,” she said with a smile.
Born Alice Walker in Kitchener, the youngest of four siblings, Alice dropped out of high school to help her newly-single mother out and take care of an ill cousin.
She was paid $5 a week and gave the money to her mother to help make ends meet, said her daughter Joan.
She was quite the athlete in her day, winning ribbons in track and field, competing in speed skating and playing shortstop in softball.
She was working at a jewellery store when she met a dashing young man named George McMillan, a Bell lineman at the time, and the two fell in love.
They eventually moved to Guelph and had three children, Joan, Wayne and Ross.
“I’ve got three kids and they’re all on old-age pension,” she said, chuckling. There’s also two grandchildren and two great grandchildren now.
Any boyfriends?
“No. No boyfriends. I don’t have time,” she said.
Alice worked in local jewellery stores and then at the family McMillans Confectionary on Edinburgh Road.
In her spare time she curled, she golfed and for many years volunteered in the gift shop at Guelph General Hospital.
Until she was 87, when she had to give up driving, she faithfully attended aquafit classes at the Guelph Y.
Wednesday’s party wasn’t quite a gala affair as her 100th birthday party at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, which was attended by around 200 people, but it was still a busy one.
“She’s made a lot of friends over the years,” said her daughter Joan.
