Unlocking the secrets to a long life, one comic at a time

At 32, Rebecca Roher is probably used to being the youngest person in the room by at least 60 years.

Roher's a Toronto artist, and in 2017 she won top honours at the Doug Wright Awards for her graphic novel Bird in a Cage, a tender memoir from her grandmother's final years. But for the last eight months she's been travelling Europe, interviewing senior citizens (aged 90 and up) for her latest comics project: One Hundred Year-Old Wisdom.

Anyone who's ever covered a 100-year-old's birthday — from the intern at your local cable access station to Ellen DeGeneres — is curious about the same biggie of a question: what's the secret to an unusually long life? Though if you've sat through any of those stories, the advice never seems to check out. Around the time she was developing Bird in a Cage, Roher was YouTube-ing loads of those videos."The secret to long life is often really funny, like 'I eat oatmeal every day!' or 'I stayed away from men!'"

It's an absurd question to ask, she says, but it's undeniably intriguing. To be mortal is to desperately want the secret. "What ARE the secrets to long life? I want to know what their answers are!"

"The history of what they've lived through — that's fascinating to me."

So since 2017, she's been seeking out the formula for herself, interviewing nonagenarians for a project that she ultimately plans to compile as a book. In the meantime, she regularly publishes short comics of the conversations. Painted in gouache and featuring Roher herself as an ever-observant reporter (for the make-believe TV station WCH TV), they've appeared in a variety of publications so far, including Taddle Creek and comics site The Nib. (Read them all via her website.)

In one comic, Lawrence, a 98-year-old from Toronto, says the secret to eternal-ish youth is drinking vodka. ("Anytime I like!") Joy, a 99-year-old from Nova Scotia, prefers rye, but she attributes her longevity to keeping busy. ("I leave my glasses upstairs for the exercise.")

Collecting everyone's "secrets to long life" is the hook of the whole project, says Roher. "I want to know their answer, or I want to get their take on it." But she's just as interested in documenting the ephemera of their daily lives.

The history of what they've lived through — that's fascinating to me.- Rebecca Roher, artist

Personal history drives the comics, and as she's met people in 10 countries around Europe — the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany and the Czech Republic — geography and culture is an unavoidable influence on their stories.

The experience of living through the Second World War couldn't be more different for two Jewish seniors she interviewed in London. Roher shared some sketches from those conversations on Instagram: "Sam survived the Warsaw ghetto, labour camps, Birkenau and a death march," she writes in the post. "Marion, who grew up in London, was evacuated to the countryside. Being Jewish hardly factored into her life at all."

And then there's her third big conversational topic: "What's it like as an elderly person above 90 existing in the world?" It's a simple question, but one that's arguably not asked all that much. It's actually part of the reason Roher started framing the comics as news reports.

"I was thinking about how we don't often put the elderly in the limelight in the media," she says. "We often shy away from old people and their stories. I think we kind of don't like to be reminded of our own decline, our death. It seems a bit strange for a reporter to interview an elderly person for their opinion." The comics, in their way, address that blind spot.

Since November, Roher's homebase has been the Maisons des auteurs, an artist residency tailored for cartoonists and animators in Angoulême, France. (One Hundred Year-Old Wisdom, which is supported by a Canada Council for the Arts grant, has been the focus of her residency.) Beyond trips to Ikaria, Greece and Sardinia, Italy — two of the world's so-called "blue zones," places where people live longer than anywhere else — Roher's found most of the interview subjects through friends. (She's found translators that way, too — including the 87-year-old grandmother of one pal, a former translator for the President of Spain.)

"There are a lot of organizations that exist in Europe that are about documenting the stories of people who've lived in the past 100 years that I've been able to connect with," she says, including Memoro and Memory of Nations. Those groups, plus various community centres and seniors residences, introduced her to folks outside her circles.

When she returns to Toronto later this summer, the chase will continue, with a particular interest in reflecting the cultural and racial diversity of the city. (If you know any interested 100-year-olds, send her an email.) Because even after all of her research, she hasn't cracked the formula for defying the average life expectancy.

"What is the secret to long life?" Roher laughs. "I've learned so much," she says, but she admits it's no one thing.

"I think the resounding theme that I see is that it's sort of like a stubborn spirit," she says. "It's this determined spirit. [The people I've interviewed] are determined to do what they've always done — they need to do it regardless of how old they are or how their body is changing, or failing, in different ways."

She remembers one woman she met in London, a former social worker named Grace. She never married; she loved her job. "She was like, 'You know, I had boyfriends, but I didn't want to listen to their bad jokes for the rest of my life," laughs Roher. "I really appreciated hearing that — that unusual narrative from the one we predominantly hear from women. That validated my own experience. And I saw that patterned in people's attitudes — this determined spirit. It is very empowering."

"This whole project feels like a bit of a humanitarian effort — a way to bring humans together to have more understanding about themselves and each other," says Roher. "That's inspiring to me. It was confirmed over and over again — which makes me want to keep doing it."

Keep up with One Hundred Year-Old Wisdom on Facebook, Instagram and Rebecca Roher's website.