Matthew Farfan

News media across the world reported last week that Julie Winnefred Bertrand, the world’s oldest living woman, had died at a nursing home in Montreal. A native of the Eastern Townships, Bertrand was born in Coaticook on September 16, 1891.

To put Julie Winnefred Bertrand’s extreme age in historical context, in the year of her birth, Sir John A. Macdonald, was still Prime Minister of Canada (he died earlier in the year), Thomas Edison received a patent for the radio, and the outbreak of World War I was still 23 years away.

The eldest child of Napoléon Bertrand and Julia Mullins, of Coaticook, Bertrand spent the better part of her life in Coaticook, working for many years at the François-Xavier Lavoie department store. She loved to travel, and never married, though she is reported to have been courted as a young woman by Louis St-Laurent, who would later become Prime Minister of Canada.

Bertrand was one month younger than Emiliano Mercado del Toro, who is the oldest living person in the world and who is still living. American Emma Tillman, age 114, is now the oldest living woman in the world.