B.C. woman reveals greatest life lesson after celebrating 100th birthday

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Celebrating a Century Adam meets a woman celebrating her 100th birthday and revealing the greatest lesson she’s learned about life.

Langford, B.C. — If you take a look to the right of Hilda Duddridge’s 100th birthday cake, you’ll see a sculpture of a smiling girl extending her arms forward.

“Twelve years old I think I was,” Hilda says, pointing to the sculpture she made showing her younger self during the global depression of the 1930s: growing up without anything, but wanting for nothing.

“I felt this moment of complete bliss,” Hilda recalls. “And I thought I just love the whole world and I just wanted to wrap it around me.”

Two years later, Hilda had to quit school to take a job at the post office to help support her family.

“It was a government job with a pension,” Hilda laughs. “At 14, you were worried about that!”

A year later, the world was at war. She lost friends and neighbours and her home was destroyed by a bomb, but Hilda never lost hope.

“We all knew we were going to win (the war),” Hilda laughs. “Mister Churchill had told us that!”

So Hilda stayed calm and carried on, before being swept off her feet by a member of the Canadian Air Force named Lew.

“It was love at first sight!” Hilda says. They met while she was waiting for a train with her friends and he offered to carry her luggage onboard.

A week later, Lew proposed. It took a little bit longer for Hilda to say “yes.” But six months later, they both said “I do.”

“He said, ‘When I first saw you I knew that you were the girl I was going to marry,’” Hilda smiles.

Lew had to return to work right after, while Hilda had to wait in Wales for her new husband to complete his service.

“As long as you love each other,” Hilda says. “You can face anything really.”

Then the war bride moved to Saskatchewan, where the couple started a family in a house with no electricity or water.

“We coped with enough all through the war,” Hilda says. “You get to know how to cope with problems.”

Thanks to their resilience and hard work, the couple and their four children ended up making countless happy memories together, before Lew recently died at almost 105, after more than 78 years together.

“He was a great guy to be married to,” Hilda smiles.

Now Hilda is celebrating a century with events featuring friends, and a family that’s grown to include six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

She’s also feeling grateful for the child depicted in her sculpture, who still part of her.

“I will never forget that moment,” Hilda smiles.

That moment she was first taught, what she now says life is all about — to embrace every moment with love.

“There has to be love in your life and forgiveness,” Hilda smiles. “I think the only way out of the mess in the world is to start loving each other.”