By Lyonel Doherty

Oliver Ambassador candidate Aaliyah Chapman pours 100-year-old Bill Fedoruk some tea at the 90-plus Tea party at the Oliver Senior Centre on Wednesday. (Photo by Lyonel Doherty)

Three thousand, six hundred and 23.

That’s how many years were represented at Wednesday’s 90-plus Tea at the Oliver Senior Centre.

It was unbelievable when Helga Aston totaled the ages up on the adding machine.

But Lily Edmonds, who’s 98.5, thought it was a lot of fuss.

“I’m not a tea party person,” she said, next to her older sister, Mary Ferris, who enjoyed the attention at the age of 100.5.

The siblings were known as “The Bell girls” when they were young. But they fought a lot, thanks to their brother who instigated many of the spats by saying one sister was stronger than the other. Then he sat back and watched the show, laughing.

“We fought over everything,” Lily said. “I thought I was stronger than her, but I wasn’t . . . she beat me up.”

But Mary said she had a lot of scratches to show for it.

The Bell girls grew up on a farm in Holden, Alberta, where their mother looked after 10 kids. To this day, Lily doesn’t know how her mother managed to raise so many children under one roof.

She recalled having no toys to play with, just the animals on the farm.

When asked about their secret to longevity, the siblings agreed that the key was happiness.

They also believe that gardening also helped, recalling that mother gave them a piece of their own garden to look after.

“We ate what came out of the ground,” Lily said.

Later on in life, the sisters practically lived in their gardens.

Mary wanted to add that her secret to reaching 100 was rolling with the punches (but she didn’t mean during her scraps with Lily).

Mary lived by the saying, “And this too shall pass.”

But she has a secret yearning to return to her favourite community. “I’d like to run away back to Okanagan Falls . . . but they got me branded,” she noted, pointing to her Sunnybank Centre wrist band.

When Lily was asked what she thought of the world today, she said it was going too fast.

Meanwhile, 100-year-old Bill Fedoruk was rather content sipping tea at his table.

When asked what his secret was, he slowly held up a fist. (Oh no, was he going to biff me? What did I say?)

But Bill would never do that, unless I tried to steal his gold. You see, Bill has been all over the world, including the Yukon, working as a gold miner. And he found lots of gold, too.

“I couldn’t cheat anyone without thinking I’d be cheating myself,” he said.

Bill admitted that he has been nourishing a bad heart for most of his life. But determination, exercise and hard work have kept the reaper away.

Bill said he was active in the church, noting the Bible was an important part of his life.

However, he doesn’t like what’s going on in the world today.

“I see what’s happening in the world, and I’m sad to say that the worst is yet to come.”