“And now the other way,” a voice calls out over swing music drifting through the Crystal Pool, and 14 bodies start swinging their hips counter-clockwise.

It’s Monday morning, just after 9 a.m., and Eva Anthony is with her friends in the water, swaying in time to the music.

The music changes to disco and as swimmers do laps nearby Eva and her friends move into the electric slide.

The median age in the group is around 70. Which means Eva was already 30 years old and a mother of three before most of her classmates were born.

Eva turned 100 last week but the Saskatchewan farmgirl isn’t slowing down much. She’s in the pool for an aquafit class twice a week.

“I was raised on a farm, you know, so I was a tough person,” she says after coming out of the water.

“My dad died so my mother tried to run the farm for a year, and I was 14 years old and I was plowing behind horses. I’m tough, you know. I’m tough. I use my brain and my muscles all the time.”

Wendy Anthony, 52, is the oldest of Eva’s seven grandchildren. Standing poolside watching her grandmother enthusiastically do the chicken dance, Wendy credited Eva’s pool time for letting her reach the age she has, living to see three great-great-grandchildren born.

“She doesn’t reach as high as everybody necessarily in the pool, but she keeps in time,” says Wendy.

Others in the class occasionally head to the wall to rest during the hour-long workout, but not Eva, though she does take timeouts to chat with some of the other women.

Aquafit is only one small part of Eva’s busy Mondays. After rising at 7 a.m. and reading the newspaper as she still does everyday, she drives herself to the pool from her Vancouver Street apartment on her scooter.

Once class is done, she heads home to host up to eight friends for their weekly card game. Then Wendy comes by to take her out for dinner. “And that’s just Monday,” Wendy laughs.

On days she’s not in the pool, Eva finds her own exercise walking by herself to Cook Street Village to buy groceries.

Eva is an inspiration to the rest of the group, says Aquafit classmate Gerard Lenoir, a burly 67-year-old with more than a hint of his original French accent.

“Oh, she’s a sweetheart. Every day I come in there, (she’s got) a big smile and I have to go and give her a big hug,” he says. “I saw a lot of people 100 years old, but the way she is, not too many of them.”

“As long as I can I’m going to do it,” Eva said.

“If you can’t do it anymore, then stop. But I am tough, I’m tougher than lots of women my age. Whatever I can do, I do.

“I enjoy life. And I can still look after myself, I don’t have a nurse or anything like that coming to see me. I still enjoy life so I’m going to live it until I die.”

kvass@vicnews.com