‘Just be lucky’ Timmins, Ont., woman quips about living to 100

A Timmins woman just celebrated a landmark birthday: Norah Lake turned 100 on Thursday.

She served in the Air Force during the Second World War and helped build and save some key landmarks in Timmins.

Lake is spry and sharp for someone who just turned 100 years old. She joked that it’s probably all luck.

“I didn’t expect to be 100,” Lake said.

“No one in my family has ever lived to be 100. I was very, I was healthy all my life.”

Lake started her life in Toronto, born into a military family with a mother and father who served overseas during the First World War, providing medical care.

At the start of the Second World War, her sister joined the navy, and Lake said felt called to serve, as well.

“I tried to join when I was 18, and unfortunately, I told my parents first and they said, no way, you're too young to be out,” she said.

“So on my 19th birthday, I didn't tell them. I just went down to the place where you could sign up and I joined the Air Force.”

Norah Lake, 100, served in the Air Force during the Second World War and helped build and save some key landmarks in Timmins. (Photo from video)

She served at a radar station in Halifax, marking the location of aircraft along the coast on a large map.

“Sometimes as many as 20 planes would be going overseas,” Lake said. “So you would be very, very busy.”

She worked with 24 women in a mostly male crew – away from danger, but on alert.

“We had excitement, at times, when something was there and I couldn't figure out what it was, but it always turned out to be, oh, a group of geese or something, I don't know,” Lake said.

She enjoyed the food, the lifestyle -- and the company.

“I went out with some of the officers… so…”

Lake spent two years in Halifax before deciding to work as a teacher in Timmins, where she met her love of over 60 years, Merton, who died in 2014. He was a Second World War navy lieutenant, businessman and avid volunteer.

Norah Lake, 100, served in the Air Force during the Second World War and helped build and save some key landmarks in Timmins. (Photo from video)

Lake fondly recalled watching Timmins develop over the decades, dancing her nights away at popular hangouts, volunteering at several local organizations -- like an old nursing school, the museum, the library – and helping save the city’s last Hollinger House and the Hollinger Mine headframe.

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As she turns 100, Lake said it’s been a life well-lived and she now enjoys her leisure time reading and doing puzzles.

And if she has any advice on how to live as long and as well as she has, it’s this:

“Just be lucky, I think. Haha! No. Being active is very important. Oh, stay away from drugs, I think, is very important. Give your children a chance at a normal, happy home life and I think you would be doing your very, very, best to live properly.”

And Lake said she hopes people work to support and improve their community, continuing the work that she and many others have happily done over the decades.