There’s one thing Edmund Cokayne attributes his long life to and that’s luck.

“I’ve been incredibly lucky,” he said, noting his health has been favourable to him all these years.

The Merritt resident became a centenarian yesterday, and despite his age he’s still active and he’s still learning.

“Right now I’m taking a course on nanotechnology,” he said.

Cokayne takes courses on DVD that offer lectures on various subjects.

“It’s kind of fun because it’s just general interest — you don’t have to take any exams,” he said with a laugh.

“You can just learn it for the pleasure of learning. I always think that when you stop learning you start dying,” he said.

Sitting in a recliner in his one bedroom apartment at the Florentine Retirement Centre with his cane in hand, Cokayne said he doesn’t feel like he’s getting any older.

“It feels like the day before or the day after, there’s no bell that rings or anything,” Cokayne said with a chuckle.

Despite pushing triple digits, he’s fully mobile, and has only lived at the retirement centre for 10 months. He lived on his own up until then.

When he arrived he was ill and required a scooter to help him get around, but was determined to be up and walking around on his own, recalled Florentine staff member Linda Hartwig.

“He started with little walks in the hallway,” Hartwig said.

When he no longer needed the scooter to get around, he lent it to a younger resident who needed it more than he did.

“He told me, he’s got to help the old people out,” Hartwig said.

A retiree for more than 30 years, Cokayne keeps busy. For the past seven years he’s volunteered with the Red Cross, he sings in the community band, enjoys going for a walk every day and even still has his driver’s license and his own vehicle.

“I just got my license renewed until I’m 105,” he said laughing.

Cokayne even learned to play guitar in his 90s.

He played gigs at local long-term care facilities in a group called the senior jammers, before the arthritis in his fingers put a stop to his playing days.

Around the Florentine, Cokayne is known to frequent the weight room and even dance during live music, cutting a rug or two with event co-ordinator Bonnie Schrader.

“She holds me up,” he said with a laugh.

Born just outside London, the fifth child in a family of six, Cokayne came into the world at a time when it was at war. He lived his childhood through the Roaring 20s and saw tough times when the Great Depression hit, as his father, who was a merchant banker, lost it all.

“I remember when I was 16, my father went bankrupt. We had to leave the house we lived in,” Cokayne said.

His world was turned upside down when his father died shortly after that from lung issues.

“When he was dying, my brother and I came to see him for him to say goodbye to us and he said ‘I’m dying penniless, and it’ll be the making of you,’” Cokayne said. 

Cokayne went on to make his way in the world as a mining engineer, attending mining school in London, and travelling to Australia to receive training in his field in 1937.

While there, Cokayne went from working on the ground to the air when he took up flying lessons and earned his pilot’s license.

When the Second World War broke out, Cokayne returned to England to join the Royal Air Force (RAF).

As a pilot, Cokayne worked as a flying instructor during the war, and that’s what brought him to Canada. Britain had flight schools stationed across the Great White North as part of the training of Allied aircrews.

Cokayne first went to a training school near Winnipeg as a pupil, and returned as an instructor at a school in Swift Current.

“I met a gal in Winnipeg [and] got married,” he said. 

“It was a wonderful marriage, she was a wonderful girl,” Cokayne said of his wife, who passed away 10 years ago.

After the war, Cokayne and his wife Janet began their life together in Canada, and raised one child together — a daughter they adopted. Cokayne went on to work at mines in Ontario before coming to Merritt in 1965 to work at the former Craigmont Mine. He then worked at a mine in Arizona before he retired in 1984, deciding to move back to Merritt to be close to family.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere I would rather be than in Merritt. It’s got something. It’s got wonderful people in it. You always feel at home in Merritt,” Cokayne said.

While his beloved wife and daughter have passed away, Cokayne has plenty of grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.