Murray Cook begins his day in the same way that he has started for most of his 97 years.
He has hot breakfast for breakfast, takes a couple of vitamins and prepares to cut wood and do other tasks to keep his family home in Coves, on the outskirts of Guysborough, ns
Surveying the average of New Scotland in almost two decades, Cook has challenged probabilities avoiding fatty foods and maintaining an active lifestyle.
“Without drinking or smoking,” he insists as reasons for his longevity.
“But fast food places: I have seen so many young girls and boys equally overweight, and then they can’t move. That is my idea of that.”
A lifetime of activity
However, Cook’s strict diet is only part of the story.
He has pushed his body since his working life began in the construction sector when he was a teenager. He joined his family’s sawmill operation in Coves Cove as a young adult, continuing through the conversion of the installation into a pulp wood operation until its closure in the 1990s.
In the fourth century after the closing of the factory, Cook personally planted 15,000 trees in Guysborough and the surrounding communities while carrying out a single -man reforestation project.
Annually cuts five strings of firewood, alternating between an ax and a larger team, to heat the house he built with his father and brother in 1956. Cook has lived alone in this building during the last eight years, with his wife now residing in A long -term care installation in Guysborough as a result of Alzheimer’s disease and its accompanying dementia.
They met when he saw her at a Halifax restaurant and took the opportunity to ask if he could sit with her for lunch.
When they later married, Cook Dug Garden Gardens in Cooks Cove because his new spouse had always loved the flowers. The couple also cultivated berries that later became the key ingredients in homemade jams and preserves.
Overcoming the probabilities at the end of the 90s
Cook has never had a credit card, always pays its debts and still travels to the cities of Antigonish and Port Hawkesbury every 10 days to make errands. Unlike many of his last year, he can still drive at night.
His son, Chris Cook, who works for the New Scotland Health Authority in the nearby Guysborough, says that his father is known for his active life and has become one of his personal heroes.
“Sitting is not something he does, he doesn’t even have television,” said the youngest chef.
“He once told me: ‘I hope to work every day and sweat. And the body, that is what it is supposed to do: the body is not supposed to be inactive.”
If Murray Cook goes out with his, his body will never be inactive.
