TORONTO — Sara Langer, who turned 101 in April, still remembers arriving in Toronto from Poland with her mother and sister on a winter day in 1924.

“My uncle met us, because my father didn’t drive. It was a cold, cold day, but there was no snow.”

Langer, who was born in Ostrowiec in 1909, said that the day she arrived in Canada “was the happiest day of my life.

“Even if I wasn’t happy, though, I wouldn’t complain. You take whatever life gives you, and every day you do what you have to. You just keep going.”

Her father, Mendel – Langer was the fifth child of Toba and Mendel Weinrib – immigrated to Canada when Langer was a young girl, and she remembers when he returned to Poland to visit. “He did not like the candles and oil lamps, so he brought electricity into our home. I remember a beautiful, fancy light fixture.”

Six months after Toba arrived in Canada with her two daughters, she left her family and went back to Poland to live with her son and daughter-in-law – her four sons eventually all left Poland on their own – because she was told everything in Canada was treif. She didn’t like it in Poland, though, so her husband sent her a ticket and she came back.

Two of Langer’s brothers moved to Detroit, and before Langer married, she lived there for four years, working in their grocery store.

She met her husband Hyman – he died at age 59 – when he rented a room across from the Weinrib family home.

They had a son, Sy, now 65, and two grandchildren, ages 19 and 22.

She was active in the sisterhood of a small, local synagogue and was a member of the ladies auxiliary of the Ostrovtzer Society. In the 1960s, she worked for a few years as a salesperson in a womenswear store.

“Everything works out evenly,” Sy Langer said. “My father died so young, but my mother is living to a beautiful age.”

Langer remarried in 1981 to Harry Strauss, who died in 1998 at age 92.

Sy said, that genetics plays part in his mother’s longevity, because her own mother lived until age 98. “My mother lived on her own until she was 94, and she always made sure to eat well.”

Asked how it feels to be 101, Langer, who now lives at Baycrest’s Apotex Centre, said that she has no idea any more how old she is. “Age is in your mind. If you feel young, you’re young.”