At 97, Nova Scotia man still cuts 5 cords of wood each year to heat his home

Murray Cook starts his day the same way he's started it for most of his 97 years. 

He has hot porridge for breakfast, takes a couple of vitamins, and sets out to chop wood and do other chores to maintain his family home at Cooks Cove, just outside of Guysborough, N.S.

Outliving the average Nova Scotian by nearly two decades, Cook has defied the odds by avoiding fatty foods and maintaining an active lifestyle. 

"No drinking and no smoking," he insists as reasons for his longevity. 

"But the fast-food places — I've seen so many young girls and young boys alike get too much overweight, and then they can't move around. That's my idea of it."

A lifetime of activity

However, Cook's strict diet is only part of the story. 

He has pushed his body since he began his working life in the construction sector as a teenager. He joined his family's sawmill operation in Cooks Cove as a young adult, continuing through the facility's conversion into a pulpwood operation until its closure in the 1990s. 

In the quarter-century following the mill's shutdown, Cook personally planted 15,000 trees in Guysborough and the surrounding communities as he carried out a one-man reforestation project.

He annually cuts five cords of firewood, alternating between an axe and larger equipment, to heat the home he built with his father and brother in 1956. Cook has lived alone in this building for the past eight years, with his wife now residing in a long-term care facility in Guysborough as a result of Alzheimer's disease and its accompanying dementia. 

They met when he spotted her at a Halifax restaurant and took the chance to ask her if he could sit with her for lunch.

When they later married, Cook dug gardens in Cooks Cove because his new spouse had always loved flowers. The couple also grew berries that later became the key ingredients in homemade jams and preserves. 

Beating the odds in his late 90s 

Cook has never owned a credit card, always pays his debts and still travels to the towns of Antigonish and Port Hawkesbury every 10 days to run errands. Unlike many of his fellow seniors, he is still able to drive at night.

His son, Chris Cook, who works for the Nova Scotia Health Authority in nearby Guysborough, says his father is well known for his active living and has become one of his personal heroes. 

"Sitting down is not something he does — he doesn't even have a TV," the younger Cook said. 

"He said one time to me, 'I look forward to working every day, and having a sweat. And the body, that's what it's supposed to do — the body is not supposed to be idle.'"

If Murray Cook has his way, his body will never be idle.