At 97, Nova Scotia guy still reduces 5 cables of timber every year to warm his home

Murray Cook begins his day similarly he’s begun it for a lot of his 97 years.

He has warm gruel for morning meal, takes a number of vitamins, and lays out to cut timber and do various other jobs to preserve his family members home at Cooks Cove, simply beyond Guysborough, N.S.

Outliving the standard Nova Scotian by virtually 20 years, Cook has actually opposed the probabilities by staying clear of fatty foods and preserving an energetic way of life.

“No drinking and no smoking,” he firmly insists as factors for his long life.

“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 life time of task

However, Cook’s stringent diet plan is just component of the tale.

He has actually pressed his body because he started his functioning life in the building and construction field as a teen. He joined his family members’s sawmill procedure in Cooks Cove as a young person, proceeding via the center’s conversion right into a pulpwood procedure till its closure in the 1990s.

In the quarter-century adhering to the mill’s closure, Cook directly grew 15,000 trees in Guysborough and the bordering neighborhoods as he executed a one-man reforestation job.

The 4 cables of timber seen below stand for 80 percent of the timber Murray Cook prepares to warm his home, which he constructed in 1956 on the family members residential property in Cooks Cove, N.S., with his dad and bro. (Adam Cooke/ CBC)

He yearly reduces 5 cables of fire wood, rotating in between an axe and bigger tools, to warm the home he constructed with his dad and bro in 1956. Cook has actually lived alone in this structure for the previous 8 years, with his spouse currently staying in a long-lasting treatment center in Guysborough as an outcome of Alzheimer’s condition and its coming with mental deterioration.

They fulfilled when he detected her at a Halifax dining establishment and took the possibility to ask her if he can rest with her for lunch.

When they later on wed, Cook dug yards in Cooks Cove since his brand-new partner had actually constantly liked blossoms. The pair likewise expanded berries that later on came to be the essential components in homemade jams and protects.

Beating the probabilities in his late 90s

Cook has actually never ever possessed a bank card, constantly pays his financial obligations and still takes a trip to the communities of Antigonish and Port Hawkesbury every 10 days to run duties. Unlike most of his fellow elders, he is still able to drive at evening.

His kid, Chris Cook, that benefits the Nova Scotia Health Authority in close-by Guysborough, claims his dad is popular for his energetic living and has actually turned into one of his individual heroes.

“Sitting down is not something he does — he doesn’t even have a TV,” the more youthful Cook claimed.

“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 means, his body will certainly never ever be still.

With his eight-year-old canine Dusty at his side, 97-year-old Murray Cook still often tends to jobs such as cutting fire wood and trimming the yard at his Guysborough County home. (Adam Cooke/ CBC)

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