Cape Breton Post October 19, 2008 Century-old immigrant tells of how her family first arrived in Glace Bay LEROY PEACH The Cape Breton Post "You look terrific," I said to retired teacher Ms. Fanny Cohen, of Glace Bay, 100 years young, as I sat in her living room on South Street last week. Given the way she looked, it was not hard to believe she had reached the century mark. Sitting comfortably in her favourite chair, she looked out on the world through luminous brown eyes. She spoke to me in a strong, clear and confident voice. She was forthright, feisty. What I received from her was precise answers and an unbelievable power to embellish her stories with telling, thoughtful detail. Fanny was 100 years old on July 16. "Yes, I was born in 19 zero 8," she said to me emphatically. She has therefore been witness to the changes and chances of Cape Breton history. Her father came to Glace Bay from the border region between Russia and Poland in 1901, when Glace Bay was incorporated as a town and did what many Jewish immigrants did in order to feed his family: he became a pedlar. He carried a pack filled with men's clothing, mostly, to such areas as Wadden's Cove and False Bay Beach. Eventually, he bought a horse and wagon. Later he opened a store on Pitt Street in Caledonia where he sold clothing and groceries. The family lived on the premises. The store was heated by a pot-bellied stove, and Fanny recalls the huge calendars hanging on the wall featuring fat men with their clay pipes. They sold such things as women's black boots, corsets, Stanfield's underwear and overalls with bibs. In 1942, her father passed on at the age of 65. He had only collected his 40-dollar old age pension for four months. "He thought he was a millionaire," she laughed. Her mother had to fight hard to get her pension because she could not locate her Russian passport. She lived until she was 88. Fanny graduated from Glace Bay High School in 1926. "I was a fair student," she says, "but I was good in algebra." At the age of 19, in 1928, she completed her studies at the Normal College in Truro. Job prospects were bleak. Her sister taught in Glace Bay, but there was a rule that two people from the same family could not teach in the urban system. Fanny was therefore compelled to teach for two years in a rural school. September arrived. Two weeks into the first term she noticed an advertisement for a teacher to serve in a remote area west of Antigonish. She wouldn't name the location. She applied; she was accepted. But her father wanted to know where she was going. When she told him, he said, "Fanny, they shoot moose there." She said to her father, "I don't care as long as they don't shoot me." Her mother asked in broken English, "Vas is moose?" She took the train to Antigonish and stayed in a hotel for the first time in her life. The next day, the mail driver, with his four-horse team, picked her up at the hotel and they drove for miles and miles through forest. "I wanted to push the forest out of the way. I realized that I missed the ocean," she said. Next week I shall describe Fanny's first teaching experience. LeRoy Peach lives in Port Morien and may be reached at leroy_peach@yahoo.ca. His column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post