Lydia Kania gets a twinkle in her eye and curls her lips into a devilish grin when the visitor suggests a game of cribbage.
“You wanna get beat?” asks the 93-year-old card shark.
She walks over and selects a pack of cards from a drawer filled with them, then takes out a custom crib board and starts shuffling as if to say, be careful what you wish for, kid.
Kania is known locally for her community work over a half century in Passmore and Vallican. She helped establish the Passmore seniors lodge in the 1990s, and has raised money for a seniors housing development opening next week in Slocan.
But Kania is also a lifelong athlete and competitor. She competed in her first 55-plus B.C. Games in 1993 (it was then called the B.C. Seniors Games), which was in itself an achievement after previously being paralyzed by polio at age 30.
She returned home with a gold in 10-kilometre power walking and a silver in the five-km event.
“That was the surprise of my life,” she says. “Somebody knew that I did a lot of walking. The doctor told me because I had polio I needed the exercise, and it did help. So a friend came along, ‘Why don’t you enter the Games? You’re always walking.’
“I came home with a silver and a gold! I couldn’t believe it.”
Kania had always been athletic. She was born in Györköny, Hungary, immigrated with her family to an Albertan farm in 1928, and said her running speed meant she’d compete on boys teams in school.
“Well, you know, when you’re a kid and there are no fences and you have to chase cows to milk, you stay in shape, I’ll tell ya.”
Kania was back at the 55-plus Games last week in Kimberley and Cranbrook. Since her debut 35 years ago she’s missed just three Games — one of which was due to a broken neck — and won enough to put a medal display up in her living room.
A deteriorated hip, and a heart attack she suffered last fall, means she doesn’t compete in track events anymore. So crib has replaced running as her sport of choice.
“Oh my. Oh my!” she exclaims when seeing the Star reporter’s hand. “You’ve got 24. Good gracious, I hope I get a hand like that. 24?! … Geez, you’re going to skunk me!”
Playing card games was considered a sin when Kania was growing up. That changed when she met Ed Kania in Edmonton during the Second World War. The pair married in 1943, moved to Utica, N.Y., and started playing canasta and pinochle.
They had five children and, after reading Eric Collier’s memoir Three Against The Wilderness, decided to move to rural B.C. in 1962. They settled on a 50-acre property in Vallican bought for $1,000. Ed passed away three years ago, but Kania still lives on the property where she’s visited by her children, eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
And when she sees her friends, they play cards.
“Some people are so serious. I play for the joy of it,” she says. “One time I had a rough session with this one couple we were playing with, then the next couple was two men and it was a joy to play with them. They were playing the same way as I do. They enjoyed it.
“You know, if only more people … get out and do this with other people, not just sit at home, watch TV or” — she stops herself, sighs and smiles — “You get me carried away.”
But she’s funny when she gets carried away. When Kania finds out how old the reporter is (older than she expected) she cries out “Holy cats!” Later she asks if it’s okay to tell another story.
Card games, for Kania, are a good opportunity to talk and think.
“That’s why I like cards I guess. It keeps your brain working, believe me.”
On the crib board, the reporter counts out a hand and moves his peg to the final hole.
“Yep, you won the game,” she says. “Jeepers. And I’ve got a gold medal for crib?”
Related:
• Wisdom from Passmore’s mayor
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