Peggy (Margeurite) McKinlay has some words of wisdom to share after 100 years of adventures.
"Creativity is the fountain of youth because it gives you that energy and you're excited to wake up every day," she said, advising people to get creative and make things.
McKinlay herself had to be creative, having grown up in some tough circumstances. The youngest child of Dutch immigrants, she was born near Bonaparte Lake, where her parents had been homesteading.
Her father left when she was still young, leaving his wife, three children and his wife's two sisters to fend for themselves. It was the Depression and there was not a lot of work or money.
The abandoned women loaded the children and their belongings into a horse-drawn wagon and spent about a year on the road, making their way to Vancouver, taking time in Merritt and Lytton along the way to earn enough money to carry on.
McKinlay recalls being a small child, too young for school, but her mother would leave her with a list of chores to complete each day, including selling the bread her mother had made.
Once they made it to Vancouver, the family lived in "dire poverty" according to McKinlay's daughter Marg, though Peggy herself said she never felt poor per se.
Just as the Second World War began, she managed to get herself a job at a Boeing factory, and started out in the factory, but when she went to quit because of the glue fumes, they asked her what she would like to do instead.
She then was trained to draw blueprints for parts and then helped do layout of a pilot's handbook. Then, the day the war ended, the doors of the factory shut and everyone who worked there had to find a new job.
She recalls as a young woman being in downtown Vancouver when the realization the war was over transformed the city. She said people celebrated by tearing off the newspapers which had been covering every single window in the city to black them out in case of an air raid, and throwing them onto the street.
"Within the first half hour we were knee-deep in newspapers," she said, recalling people kissing and hugging as they realized the Allied forces had won.
With her confidence and abilities, the young woman immediately got a new job with the Hudson't Bay Company, doing layout, and was later featured in Canada's History Magazine for breaking the glass ceiling in her role at the company as art director, designing ads. Sometimes the young beauty even modelled for the ads herself.
She eventually left her job to have her first child, having married a lawyer whom she had four children with, two boys and two girls: Dan, John, Marg and Liz.
Her husband died when he was just 49 years old, however, once again leaving Peggy in some tough circumstances as a single mother of four.
She managed by selling real estate and starting two different pottery schools and other jobs. Twelve years after she became a widow, she found a new partner whom she would travel across the province with, camping and exploring the outdoors.
The couple camped at Fletcher Lake in the Chilcotin one night, and watched a golden sunset which left them wondering about owning a piece of paradise.
"It was absolutely fairyland," she said. The couple asked a real estate agent to keep them in mind if something ever came up on the lake, and when it did, they bought it.
They lived next to another Chilcotin legend Vera Bonner.
Later, Peggy's second partner died and she eventually moved into town when the remote property became too much for her alone. Today her two sons live on the property.
She herself lives in a care home in Williams Lake, and when she received her letter from the King, congratulating her on reaching 100 years of age, she showed she still has a spark.
"Camilla, get off my pillow," she joked, as she contemplated taking Camilla's place by the King's side.
