A Calgary retirement residence is seeing more mail deliveries than it’s used to as hundreds of birthday cards arrive to help a Second World War veteran mark a major milestone.
As of Monday morning, more than 200 cards have been delivered to the Evanston Summit Retirement Residence where on March 7, Carl Booth will celebrate his 100th birthday.
“I don’t know how I’m going to read them all. Whether I’m going to live long enough to read them all,” laughed Booth.
Victoria Slany, event coordinator with the retirement home, organized the initiative and says they are hoping to collect as many cards as possible from the community.
“We did do a shoutout asking for birthday cards for Carl. We did do that for our last resident and we actually were able to get 651 cards,” said Slany, who hopes to collect 652 for Booth.
“It doesn’t happen all the time so you gotta make sure (to) go big or go home with it,” she adds.
Booth, a father, and grandfather, has been living at the residence for several years. And at 99 years and 343 days old, he isn’t short on stories to share.
“Yes, if I can remember them all,” he says.
Born in 1923 on a farm in Saskatchewan, Booth and his family moved to Alberta in his early teens.
In his 20s he served in the Canadian Armed Forces, having his infantry training in Edmonton and Calgary before being shipped out to England to serve in the Second World War.
“Infantry is something I never wanted to be in, quite frankly. There’s certainly a lot of walking and all kinds of things like that,” Booth said.
“When I got in, in the very first part of 1943, they wanted to get you on the front lines as soon as possible because they were getting short of people. That’s why I was in the front lines less than nine months after I joined the army,” he added.
While he was stationed in Aldershot — an hour southwest of London — Booth said that’s where one of his most cherished memories took place with the future Queen of the Commonwealth, on a night while out with “the boys.”
“They kinda dared me to go up and ask her for a dance,” Booth said of the interaction with the then-Princess Elizabeth, who was a teenager at the time.
“Being a young guy, you know, you do things like that. She agreed to dance and they let her — the people who was with her.
“It was just a short twirl around a couple of times and that was it.”
After the war, Booth settled in Edmonton, where he would work for Northern Telecom Limited for 35 years before retiring in 1984.
Booth was married and has two children and two grandchildren.
Living now at the Calgary retirement residence, friends there say the lifelong Edmonton Oilers fan never misses a game. He’s also referred to as the life of the party.
“He is one of my best buddies, really. He’s just so full of good humour and just plain fun,” friend Lou Kimpe said.
“He’s always got a laugh,” another friend, Gwen Edwards, said. “He’s always cheerful. You can be down, and he can make the day for you.”
According to Booth, the secret to a long life is a lot of sleep, healthy eating, and the odd drink of rye or rum. But the most important thing is “to be happy and laugh a lot.”
“I just lived life as it came along,” he says. “I tried to be as good a person as you can.”
Anyone wanting to send a birthday card for Carl can send them to:
Carl Booth via Victoria
Evanston Summit Retirement Residence
150 EvansPark Manor
Calgary, AB
T3P 0N4