Great-grandma marks 105th birthday with 'grisly' murder mysteries and a glass of rum

At age 105, Florentine "Monty" Johnston said she feels only "about 50 or 60." 

"I feel like I could get up and go," said Johnston, who lives in Saint John, N.B. 

With her freshly set auburn hair, smart green pantsuit and corsage of pink and white carnations, she's more lively than some people half her age. 

"I still have my mind. I'm pretty good in my chair," she said. "That's how I stay alive. I hold onto the damned thing."

At her birthday party Friday afternoon at the Chateau de Champlain retirement community in Saint John, which included pound cake and a happy birthday serenade by singing mechanic Danny Joyce, she was in the mood to look back on a life well lived.

Growing up in Cape Breton in the 1920s and 1930s was "hard," she said.

"When I was young, there was nothing unless you paid for it. When there's six children in your family, and it's tough times, you just don't get everything that's going.

"But I think I did all right."

She graduated from Saint John Vocational School, where she studied stenography, and got to work immediately after graduation at age 17. Her first job was at the New Brunswick Museum, typing up information about the specimens. 

"I couldn't afford to go to college at the time," she said. "Things were tough in those days."

Later, she worked for Irving Oil as a credit card supervisor. 

Her nickname comes from the surname of her first husband, John F. Montague, the father of her three children. After his death, she married her second husband, George Johnston.

"I'm still Monty, and everyone calls me Monty," she said. "I don't know everybody's name, but everybody knows mine. The others — there's Anns, and Joes, and Jims, and all that. But Monty is the only Monty in the room."

After outliving both her husbands, she travelled the world with the money she put aside — including spending summers in Barbados for more than 20 years.