Murray Wood: The most charming words kids say are usually the wrong ones
Kids mispronounce the funniest things. And Murray Wood thinks that sometimes, parents shouldn't rush to fix them.
At 100 years old, Saskatoon’s Ileen Boechler doesn’t hesitate when asked what moment in her life she would return to.
It’s not a wedding or a career milestone. In fact, it’s not something formal at all.
Instead, it’s a birthday, a field and a row of potatoes.
Read more Saskatchewan Stories from Brittany Caffet:
- Meet the 89-year-old blacksmith keeping the craft alive
- 90-year-old hockey players prove you’re never too old to play
- ‘We can do this’: Second World War veteran reflects on women breaking barriers
Boechler was born in 1926 in Imperial, and grew up in rural Saskatchewan.
“I loved life there,” she recalled with a smile. “I had a lovely childhood.”
There was no electricity, no running water and no telephone, but on her birthday each year, there was an annual tradition.
“My birthday is May 24, and before 1952 it was a school holiday,” Boechler recalled. “Because we’re farm people, Irish people, guess what we did on May 24? Kids are home from school. We planted spuds!”
Some people may consider planting potatoes to be an awful way to spend their birthday, but for Ileen Boechler, it is one of her most fond memories. (Submitted)
That, she said, was just how birthdays were.
“Everybody says, ‘Oh, how awful,’” Boechler laughed. “But, you know, it wasn’t awful at all. It was kind of like a picnic. My mom would cook a lovely supper, and we were outdoors. So I never, ever regretted it or disliked it at all.”
Listen to the story on Behind the Headlines:
The memory sits with her clearly, even at 100 years old. Not because it was unusual, but because it was ordinary in the best possible way.
Of all the milestones that followed — getting married, teaching for 30 years, raising three children, watching the world change beyond recognition — it is that memory she returns to. Just a birthday in a field, and time with the people she loved.
Ileen Boechler said of all of the things she’s accomplished over 100 years of life, raising her family is at the top of the list of her proudest achievements. (Submitted)
Advice from a century of living
Boechler’s advice for reaching 100 comes without fuss.
“You have to do something that makes you feel useful. You have to do something constructive,” she said. “You have to keep moving. And I think being grateful is very important.”
Even memory, for Boechler, has rules. It is not a place to linger in regret.
“You only look back to celebrate. You don’t look back to regret,” she insisted. “I don’t regret very much at all, and I also don’t worry very much.”
Even at 100 years old, Boechler continues to travel. She visited Arizona this past winter. (Submitted)
Life today, Boechler said, feels heavier in some ways than the world she grew up in. Not because it is less comfortable, but because it is more connected, more immediate and more demanding.
“I think it’s more difficult. I think raising children is more difficult too,” she noted. “There’s Internet, there’s social media… so many influences that we didn’t have to face.”
Boechler doesn’t speak like someone looking backward for an escape. She keeps moving through the present, modern technology at her side, life still very much in motion.
“To be 100 and have all my original parts and have my head, that’s a gift, I tell you,” she said. “I’m so grateful for that. And as long as I feel like this, bring on life. I love it.”
At her 90th birthday party, she told the room something simple: “See you in 10 years.”
With her 100th birthday party planned for this weekend, it no longer sounds like a line meant to impress.
It sounds like the same philosophy that shaped her earliest memories.
Keep moving. Stay useful. And meet life as it comes — one ordinary, meaningful day at a time.
A childhood of birthday potato planting still shapes centenarian Ileen Boechler’s outlook on life: stay useful, stay grateful and keep moving forward. (Brittany Caffet/650 CKOM)
