The world's oldest Jew and Canadian, a woman named Cecile Klein, has passed away at the age of 114 years and 212 days. She was born on June 15, 1907, and died on January 13, 2022.
Klein was born in the city of Montreal, in the Canadian province of Quebec, to Polish-born Jews Louis Efros and Rachel Pearson Efros.
In 1923, Klein began attending secretarial school and learned to type, finding employment first at a law office and later in the human resources department at RCA Victor, an electronics manufacturer.
According to Gerontology, Klein later moved to Westmount, Quebec, where she married Israeli Erwin Klein (1905-1999), on June 5, 1932. The couple had three children: Harriet, Arnold, and Louise. Erwin died in 1999 at the age of 94 after 67 years of marriage. Klein lived in her Westmount duplex until she suffered a fall in 2017 and later moved to an assisted living facility for the elderly.
Klein could still read the newspaper without glasses at the age of 111, Gerontology noted. She was the oldest living person in Canada and the 11th oldest living person in the world. With her passing, the title of the oldest living person in Canada will pass to Japanese-Canadian Shige Mineshiba (born May 18, 1909), 112 years old, who lives in the city of Vancouver.