Cora Hansen, Canada's oldest known living person, has died in Medicine Hat, Alberta, at the age of 113. She became a "supercentenarian" after she passed the age of 110, one of only a dozen or so in the world.
The last person who had lived through three centuries currently in Canada, Hansen was born in Minnesota on March 25, 1899 to Norwegian immigrants, and moved with her parents and nine siblings to Jenner, Alberta when she was 13 years old.
Hansen (nee Clausen) and her husband Richard Hansen were married for 41 years before he passed away in 1975, and she eventually moved from their retirement town of Elkwater, Alberta into care facilities, first in Saskatchewan, and then in Medicine Hat, near her daughter.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford visited Hansen in honour of her 113th birthday in March this year, and released a statement this morning. “I am deeply saddened to hear that Cora passed away,” she noted.
On her 107th birthday, Hansen told the Medicine Hat News, the key to a long life "is in God's hands. I didn't drink or anything like that. I lived a plain life." Hansen's 75-year-old daughter, Eleanor MacArthur, who was by her mother's side when she passed away, attributed her long life to "good genes," according to the Calgary Sun.
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