Edith King was eight when her older brothers went off to war. Unfortunately not an unusual experience, except the war in this case was the First World War and King lived in what she described as a much stricter, very different world in Surrey, England almost 100 years ago.
Her brother died in that war, as did one of her two youngest brothers who fought in the Second World War a quarter century later.
Though she said they never felt poor, she recognizes they were and as one of 12 children she did what young women did at the time and went to work as a domestic at age 14.
As a young adult in 1927 she moved with her family to Canada and ended up in Lloydminster where she married a farmer and lived much of her life and had four children who are all still alive, and the fourth generation of her family still lives on the same farm.
King now lives in Stanford Place in Parksville where she is the first person anyone remembers celebrating their 107th birthday, which she did last Thursday.
