Anna Bereti arrived at her 100th birthday in style - riding in a black stretch limousine with her grandchildren.
It was a far cry from the first car her parents owned, a 1927 Chevrolet Coupe -a car that wasn't made until she was already in her early teens.
Well-wishers came from across Canada, the U.S. and even Austria to help Bereti mark her milestone birthday.
"I expected some people, but not all these beautiful people," Bereti said. "Everyone is a dear."
Bereti still lives on her own, with some help from her daughter Bett Polsom and her family.
When asked what lessons she's learned from her 100 years on Earth, Bereti said "I didn't think of that, I didn't have time."
"I'm just very proud of my family, that they're all beautiful and well, that's the main thing," she said. "I'm hoping for the best."
Bereti's family included her daughter, son Ernie Bereti, six grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and her "baby sisters" Julie Colbourne and Betty Alexander, themselves 91 and 92 years old.
Ernie Bereti said his mother was born Anna Ethel Sipos on June 28, 1914 -the same day Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which would eventually spark the First World War. She was the second child of Antal and Elizabeth Sipos.
Antal Sipos was born in the Duchy of Bukovina, which is now divided between the Ukraine and Romania, but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1905, at the age of 18, he fled to avoid conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, Ernie said.
"He had lost a brother [serving the Austro-Hungarian army] and wasn't going to suffer the same. He ended up on a boat and came to Canada to Pier 21 [in Halifax]," Ernie said. "From there he took a train to Cupar, Sask., which is just north of Regina."
Sipos spent time working on farms in Cupar before he met and married Elizabeth, the daughter of a Hungarian immigrant family, in 1911. They bought their own farm and had eight children, of which Anna was the second.
"She was like a second mother to us," Colbourne said of her older sister. "In our day the older ones had to look after the younger ones... that was the way it was."
Alexander said their parents were busy looking after the family farm and other kids, so her older sister was helping in the kitchen "as soon as she could hold a spoon."
On Nov. 27, 1935 Ernie said his mother married his father, Louis Bereti. Ernie was born on Dec. 2, 1936 and his sister Bett was born on May 19, 1939.
"When I think of my mother I think of food, she was the best darn cook," Ernie said. "She loved her family very much. [And] she was an expert seamstress. She sewed all our clothes as kids."
The family moved to Regina, Sask. were Bereti began working as a nursing attendant, Ernie said.
"During her life she did nursing at a Regina's [two] hospitals," Ernie said.
She later worked in a centre for Second World War veterans, from which she retired in the 1970s.
But she never lost her farm roots, he said.
"I remember on May 4, 1948, so I could be like the other kids she bought me a brand new red bicycle that she ordered from Eaton's," he said. "She did that with money she made milking cows and marketing the cream to dairies."
Ernie said that incident stood out in his mind and exemplified the kind of woman his mother his: kind, hardworking and dedicated to her family.
Louis Bereti died in 1990 and Ernie said her mother moved to Prince George from Regina in 2007 to be closer to his sister.
A 20-YEAR PROMISE
While visitors came from Chicago, Arizona, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to help Bereti celebrate her birthday, none came farther than Inge Trieb. Trieb lives just outside Vienna, Austria.
Trieb's son married Bereti's granddaughter in Vienna 20 years ago.
"Anna invited me to come to visit in Canada. I promised Anna I would come, if she turned 100, to congratulate her," Trieb said. "In February I had an invitation from her. I never thought I would really come, but now I'm here."
