When I meet her, Florence Giles greets me at the door with a smile and a handshake. Giles is a slim, petite woman with a neat, white pageboy. She is wearing perfectly creased dress pants and the kind of low chunky heels that fly off the shelves in vintage clothing shops.
I never would have guessed that the bouquet of hundredth birthday balloons in the corner of her sitting room belonged to this bubbly little lady.
Giles, who lives in St. Albert, turned 100 on August 23. She grew up in Strathclair, Man. until her family moved to Alberta when she was a young girl.
In the last century, Giles says she has seen many, many good things, but her two children – son Lundy and daughter Gail – are the pride of her life.
“The happiest time of my life was my dear family throughout,” she says. “We were there for each other. Yes, we had ups and downs, but who doesn’t?”
Her family is a big one. Giles’ husband Robert passed away years ago, but she has her children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She speaks with pride about her great-grandson Callum’s upcoming wedding.
“The first marriage of that generation.”
The lively centenarian began playing the piano as a young girl, and it has been a lifelong passion. She continues to sit down and play, even now.
“I think I do better now than I used to,” she says.
She enjoys playing hymns on Sundays, but has no preference; she just opens a music book and plays what is on the page.
“I’ve taken many, many hours on that old piano,” Giles says. “I don’t care if there’s not a soul around.”
Though she now plays just for the pleasure of it, there was a time when Giles worked as a musician to help make ends meet for her young family when times were tough on their farm near Spirit River, Alta.
“I met a family and they were a musical family and they had one of the stores in the town,” says Giles. “They had two daughters and they had two sons and the father and another man who used to play and so I played music with them. And they’d come and get me and we went all around the country – we had a good outfit.”
Giles later went to work in the hospital for many years.
“I always liked nursing of any kind,” she says. “I used to take the chickens in if they flew too bad.”
Giles, whose maiden name is Keyser, had two brothers – Joe and Roy – and a sister, Thelma, all of whom have passed on.
“Now I’m the last one left,” Giles says. “And no one has gotten to this far yet, but our bunch, we’re long livers.”
Though Giles is no longer able to share memories with her siblings, she counts herself lucky to have had a chance meeting with a distant family member here in St. Albert – Earl Millman.
“I was at the Legion and Earl was there too and I remembered that there were Millmans in Strathclair, but never dreamed of meeting anybody from Strathclair,” Giles says.
The two eventually connected and discovered that Giles’ uncle had married the sister of Millman’s wife.
“He knows all my people,” Giles says. “He knows all of them (in Strathclair) because that was his home. He knows all the roads and where we went, and he’s just been so wonderful to have.”
