That time I interviewed the oldest person in Canada

Once I made the arrangements to interview Elizabeth Kimoff, a few weeks after her 110th  birthday party, I started to think about what I would ask her. I had interviewed about a dozen centenarians at this point, but Elizabeth was in a new category. She was a supercentenarian, having reached the milestone of 110 years old.

She had a framed black-and-white photograph in her room at a care community in Toronto, which showed three young boys standing together. One of those boys was Elizabeth’s son, 86-year-old Dr. Richard Kimoff, who was present for the interview.

I sat next to Elizabeth and held her hand.

“Do you have a favourite place?” I asked her.

“Kolešino,” she responded, referring to the farming community in rural Macedonia where she was born, one of nine children. Missionaries came to her village when she was a little girl, and upon hearing the Gospel, her father became a devout Christian for the rest of his life. She describes him as a talented and gifted man, skilled in many ways. He designed and sewed garments for the villagers, preached, and helped the poor in the village by distributing wood on a laden donkey. Her mother often visited the sick and brought food she had prepared.

Elizabeth was born in 1904 and moved to Canada with her brother in 1923 at the age of 18, once her mother had convinced her father to let her go. The siblings stayed in Switzerland for a month until their papers were ready, and then moved to Belgium to board a ship for Canada. She shared a cabin with a woman and her two children, and suffered seasickness throughout the entire voyage. They landed in Halifax and entered Canada after passing an examination.

After settling in Toronto and becoming part of the growing Macedonian community, her first job was working as a finisher of men’s suits for a Bulgarian-owned business on King Street. These were challenging times, marked by numerous cultural adjustments and a significant language barrier. She married in October 1926 and moved into a shared house on Gerrard Street with her husband, Slavcho, who was from an adjacent village to Kolešino.

The couple moved to an apartment shortly afterwards, and Richard was born in 1928. A year later, they purchased a house on Monarch Park Avenue, and Slavcho worked at a butcher shop, while Elizabeth attended night school. They had two more boys, Robert and William.

“What do you remember about your childhood?” I asked.

She thought for a long time. “Picking cherries,” she said, as a beautiful smile crept over her face. “They had lots of cherry trees in the village. They were good cherries, not watery. They were sweet.”

Years later, she maintained a few peach trees in Toronto that she had planted from seed.

My next question of “Who has influenced you the most?” was quickly rephrased as “Who has been the most important person in your life?”

That smile came in again. “Mother was special. She was a good mother, and father too, but in a different way. They each had their place. But mom is mom.”

I interviewed Elizabeth in 2014 as part of a life writing project, and I will never forget those three words she said: mom is mom. It always makes me think of my own childhood. I grew up on a country lane on the outskirts of a large city in England. I used to walk the long, winding lane of my childhood with my mother and sister to buy fresh farm eggs, pick blackberries, and pat two horses that came to the fence line of one of the fields. My sister and I affectionately named those horses “Salt and Pepper” because one was brown and the other was white.

I haven’t thought about those horses in decades, but I can see them now in my mind’s eye. I would pat the strong muscles of their necks and rub their soft noses. I remember going back to the edge of those fields each Mother’s Day to pick daffodils that grew through the fence.

That memory of those horses takes me back to Mother’s Day when I was a kid, making breakfast in bed for my mother—boiled eggs, toast with butter, tea and milk. It was sloppy, and I dropped a soft-boiled egg down the stairs once. My mother wasn’t angry at the mess. She laughed and kissed me, enjoying the one egg still on her plate. 

I cherish any memories like these of my mother because I was barely out of my teenage years when she suddenly passed away. I shared my memory of Salt and Pepper with my sister, and she added her memories of that time, which enriched my perspective on that period in my life.  

The way we share childhood memories like these with siblings and parents helps strengthen our connection and deepen our relationship with loved ones, even those who have passed away. Our childhood experiences create the people we become for the rest of our lives. Even if we didn’t have the best childhood, there are always a few positive memories we can remember.

Elizabeth Kimoff led an active and disciplined life, especially with her diet and devotion to the Christian faith. She passed away a few days before turning 111, and I’ll never forget her.

We all lead unique and unforgettable lives that will, unfortunately, be forgotten in about two generations unless we preserve them in some way, such as with a life legacy book. Life stories should last longer than one lifetime.