Age is only a number, 100-year-old says

TORONTO — Turning 100 is not a big deal to Ruth Lederman. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really believe it,” she said in an interview in her Thornhill condominium.

With her hair neatly done, and wearing beads and a Lacoste sweater draped over her shoulders, Lederman added, “but of course I’m happy. I’m always happy.”

Born in Iwaniska, Poland, in 1910, Lederman came to Canada in 1934, following her husband, Lou – he died in 1992 – who had come five years prior. “When we were engaged, I told him I would only marry him if he took me to Canada.

“A rich man in town also wanted to marry me, so to get away from him, [Lou and I] took a horse and buggy and drove to Opatow to get married. The money wasn’t important to me.”

An uncle in New York sent her money for a ticket to Canada, she said, and she brought along her three-year-old cousin Dorothy, now in her 80s, who was among the 60 people who attended Lederman’s 100th birthday celebration.

Also at the party were her two children, Elly Sherman and Lawrence Lederman, as well as her four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Lederman said that her mother died when she was a young girl, and her father and three brothers died in the war. “My husband had 16 children in the family, and some of them also died in the war.

“We didn’t have much family here, but we had very good friends in the Ivansker Mutual Benefit Society. It was our life for many years.”

She worked side by side with her husband until they retired in the 1970s, she said. “First we worked together at a dress factory where I was a sewer and he was a cutter.”

In the mid-1940s, they opened Eleanor’s Ladies Wear on Mt. Pleasant Avenue, and went on to own to other womenswear stores.

Sherman said the family attributes their mother’s longevity to her hard work and her love of keeping fit.

“It was important to her to keep healthy, so she exercised, and watched what she ate. She only stopped doing yoga five years ago. She’s had a few falls over the years, but has never broken a bone. I think that’s because of her flexibility.”

Sherman said that her mother, always a Zionist, visited Israel several times.

Looking at the card Lederman received from Queen Elizabeth, Lederman said, “sure it’s nice, but doesn’t everyone [who turns 100] get one?”

She stressed that she doesn’t like to be with “old ladies. I don’t want to hear people complain. Age is not how old you are, it’s how you act.”