Random Access

There’s nothing like meeting a few of Mississauga’s oldest citizens to renew your faith in the indomitable human spirit.
This past week, I’ve talked to two local residents who turned 100 and a 92-year-old who still spends a couple of hours every morning on his ham radio helping sailors around the world communicate with each other and the mainland.
“Oh, the reporter’s back again. We can’t get rid of him, can we?,” Ruth Verth said to her daughter when I managed to wait out the well-wishers to talk to her for a second time at her 100th birthday party, Friday at Cawthra Gardens.
Of course, Verth was kidding. I think. But, then again, maybe not.
The Toronto-born Verth has been a straight arrow for a long time, according to her family, one with a sharp tongue and a low tolerance for things and people she doesn’t like.
Her family told me that she's complained about the long-term residence being full of old people, so the question is posed to her.
“Some people just aren’t right in their minds, you know. You don’t know whether to speak to them or not,” she said. No sugar-coating here.
As we talk she makes it clear that she’d still be living in her own house, which she did until she was 98, if she could still get her own meals.
Anna Yacuk may be 100 but she saw out-partied a lot of the family guests who came around to celebrate her special occasion at the Lorne Park house she shares with her son Steve Binkowksi and his family Saturday night.
“Baba hung in for 11 of the 12 hours. Quite the little party girl,” granddaughter Dawn reports.
Yacuk’s stamina is not surprising when you think about the extraordinary events of her life. She was just three when her father left Ukraine for Canada before the outbreak of World War I. Her brother walked home from France when the war ended, a journey that took a year. Shortly after he arrived home, their mother died.
A displaced Russian family in Poland allowed Anna and her sister to work for room and board before her father finally was able to send for her in 1927. The Depression lay in wait in Canada. Yacuk quickly married and she and her husband struggled to thrive, which eventually they did.
By about 7:15 a.m. every day in his bungalow nestled against the western bank of the Credit River, Dr. Ernie Meyer, 92, hobbles down the stairs (his knees are gone from his two decades of jogging after he retired) and settles into the big desk in front of his short-wave radio to monitor the Mississauga Maritime Net. It’s a network he and a half-dozen amateur radio buffs set up 21 years ago to help small craft on the high seas.
About 140,000 contacts later, Meyer can reel off endless stories of round-the-clock assistance by the volunteer ham operators during hurricanes; advice to mariners that probably saved them from high seas pirates; and, innumerable links with sailors that assisted them to safely circumnavigate the world.
It’s the only service of its kind in Canada and has proven invaluable to many sailors, who often express their gratitude with thank you cards and bouquets of flowers.
Meyer, who was a surgeon at St. Joseph’s and Toronto General Hospital for many years, casually mentions his war service and the broken back he suffered (“It was my fault”) while jumping a fence to rush to help downed flyers. “Don’t write about that,” he instructs futilely.
Guess we better not mention his work with the Canadian Red Cross, the regular contact with the KGB, which had the only short-wave radios in Russia for many years, or the invaluable advice he, as a doctor, has provided to innumerable sailors who were a long, long way from the nearest drop-in clinic.
Anna, Ruth and Ernie are three people who are united by a lot more than just their longevity.
What’s their secret?
One thing that helps is obvious: it’s a really good idea to maintain your passion for something, be it your family or your hobby. Staying engaged with the world may be one good way to see a lot more of it.