Ukrainian Canadian - Canada's oldest dies just shy of 112

[stepanstas]

Ukrainians sure know how to live long.

Canada's oldest dies just shy of 112

Manitoba's Elizabeth Buhler, who's believed to be Canada's oldest living person, has died -- just two weeks shy of her 112th birthday.

Family members said Buhler passed away Sunday night at a nursing home in Winkler, Man.

Born in Ukraine on Feb. 8, 1899, her daughters had already begun planning a small birthday party, but Buhlers' health began to decline early in the new year.

"Oh, Lord have mercy on her, she was so very frail sitting in her wheelchair," said daughter Lena Pranke on Tuesday morning.

Buhler's large family was able to converge at her bedside before she died.

"I told her 'Mom, we're all here,' and that seemed to give her some peace," said Pranke.

When Buhler was born, Queen Victoria ruled Canada, the Czar led Russia, the Boer War broke out and Manitoba was just 29 years old.

Buhler was just weeks shy of giving birth to her first child, Isaac, when she and her husband, who she married on Sept. 7, 1924 in Russia, her parents and several other family members, uprooted and left for a new life in Canada in 1925.

The couple lived on the family farm south of Winkler, Man. near the American border, which they left in 1956, to allow their son to work it.

They raised a son and five daughters on the farm and the couple moved to a house in Winkler where they took in boarders. Her husband died at 69.

"They were married 43 years, so she has been a widow almost as long as she was married," her 74-year-old daughter, Justina Suderman, told the Winnipeg Free Press last year.

Buhler's age cannot be verified because her family says all birth records were destroyed during the years Josef Stalin was leader of the Soviet Union.