Saskatchewan’s oldest resident celebrated her 113th birthday on Friday with family members in person and over video chat.
Reita Fennell usually celebrates her birthdays with close to 100 people. This year, her grandson and his wife visited Fennell in Melfort and shared birthday cake.
Her granddaughter-in-law, Carmen Irvine said Fennell is a social butterfly so the isolation from the pandemic has affected her.
This pandemic isn’t the first one Fennell has lived through. She was born in 1907 and recalls the Spanish Flu, which she lost family members to.
“She’s really missing seeing her family but we made the best of it,” Irvine added that she went through birthday cards with Fennell during their visit.
Fennell was able to FaceTime her grandsons in Saskatoon and Brandon on her birthday.
“She loves to FaceTime, that’s her new thing now.”
Irvine said every time she visits Fennell they FaceTime somebody. Fennell chooses who that somebody is.
While she doesn’t do much anymore, her biggest hobby was crocheting blankets.
Irvine told the Daily Herald that Fennell was likely too tired for an interview on Friday, but last year she said she didn’t have a secret for a long life.
“I don’t think we have any power within ourselves to live, no matter what it is. I think, within my own feeling, if God didn’t lend us a helping hand day by day as we go through life, we wouldn’t make it,” Fennell said last year.
With Melfort Journal files from Michael Oleksyn
