As she turns 100, Ottawa’s Mirandy Collins still swimming happily through life

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Asked what brings her joy as she approaches her 100th birthday, Ottawa’s Mirandy Collins is unequivocal: “Swimming,” she says. “I’ve always loved swimming.”

Collins credits swimming with keeping her happy and healthy for most of her century. She learned to swim in a shallow river near her hometown of Coalmont, B.C., by holding onto a rock, then releasing herself into the current and dog-padding to stay afloat.

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She continued to swim when she joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War and later as she criss-crossed the continent with her military husband, John Collins, raising four children.

She continues to swim now as she glides toward her 100th birthday on Aug. 17. Collins visits Liquid Gym once a week, and this summer she swam as many as 20 laps in a neighbour’s pool.

“I’m happy when I get in the water,” Collins says from the living room of her Rideauview Terrace home, where she’s lived for 40 years. “Now, it’s especially nice to swim because I’m sort of free in the water and don’t have to worry about falling or anything like that.”

Her neighbours are hosting a birthday celebration for her later this summer, as will her church, Julian of Norwich Anglican Church.

One of Collins’ neighbours, Carleton University management professor Linda Duxbury, calls her an inspiration: a flesh-and-blood lesson in how to age gracefully.

“She’s a living, breathing, walking example of what it means to be resilient,” Duxbury says. “She has a very positive outlook on life and on the people she meets. She doesn’t let things get her down. She doesn’t complain, but focusses on what’s good about her situation.”

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Collins’ son, Jim, 73, a retired Anglican minister, lives with his mother. “She’s a very intelligent, very caring person. She likes to help people,” he says.

Collins was born Edith Marie Hudson on Aug. 17, 1924, in Coalmont, a small coal-mining town in the British Columbia interior. Her father was a steam engineer. The family moved during the Great Depression to the Fraser Valley so Collins’ older sister could go to high school.

Collins finished high school in Chilliwack, B.C., but decided against what was then called senior matriculation because it cost $100. “We weren’t very affluent,” she says.

Instead, she took a job as a riveter with Boeing Canada in its Sea Island manufacturing plant, which built PBY Catalina Aircraft for off-shore air patrols. The plant in Richmond, B.C., opened in 1939 as production ramped up for the Second World War.

The war opened up vast new job opportunities for women like Collins, who took on traditionally male roles so men could be released for wartime service.

Collins was anxious to do still more for the war effort and tried to enlist with the Royal Canadian Navy, but it was not yet accepting women. (The navy would be the last Canadian military branch to recruit women, opening the door in July 1942). She also approached army recruiters, but they could only offer her jobs as a cook or a typist.

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She ultimately joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, the first military branch to recruit women, and travelled to Ottawa in 1944 for basic training at the Rockcliffe air base.

The RCAF did not train women as pilots, and the women’s division slogan — “We serve that men may fly” — reflected that fact. More than 17,000 women would serve in the air force, mostly in clerical and administrative roles, but some would also work in electrical and mechanical trades.

After basic training, Collins, a leading aircraftwoman, trained as a meteorological observer because she thought it sounded “more exciting” than a job in accounting.

She was posted to Dartmouth, N.S., and served for two years as a MET Observer. Collins would take weather readings to help prepare forecasts for air force officials tasked with sending patrol aircraft to meet convoys crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

In August 1946, with her military service at an end, Collins and two friends “hitch-hiked” around North America by talking their way aboard air force planes. They made stops in New York, Florida and California, among other places.

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But, when she reached her home in Vancouver, Collins was lost. “I didn’t know what to do,” she says.

With financial help from the Veterans Rehabilitation Act, Collins became one of 54,000 Canadian veterans to go to university. She studied pre-medicine courses at the University of British Columbia.

At UBC, an acquaintance asked Collins to accompany her on shopping a trip with her cousin in downtown Vancouver. They met that cousin under the Birks clock: John “Slim” Collins was a former merchant marine turned RCAF pilot and instructor.

“I thought he was quite nice, and quite handsome,” Collins says.

They married the following year. The couple lived in six provinces and five U.S. states as John Collins pursued a military career that would take him to the senior ranks of NORAD.

During one Ottawa posting, they bought a house on Woodside Drive in Copeland Park, where the neighbourhood women, most of whom didn’t work, formed their own community. “We all depended on each other,” Collins says.

In retirement, the Collins built a home on Rideauview Terrace. After her husband died in 2008, Mirandy Collins — Mirandy is a nickname she has used since the war — maintained her active and involved life: swimming, reading, praying, solving crossword puzzles and visiting with friends and family.

“There have been ups and downs, but I really believe that God is with me,” she says, “that he has brought me this far and is going to see me through the rest.”

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