‘Cass’ is about to turn 100, still walks every day

Kazys Svirplys, known to friends and family simply as Cass, had a bounce in his step as he headed out the door for his daily walk. He was practically sprinting, while making jokes and laughing as he walked to collect the mail from the box around the corner from his Virgil home.

Cass will turn 100 years old April 28.

“So far I feel good. I walk every day for about half an hour, then come to the corner here to pick up my mail,” he said.

“The rest of the day, I just watch TV, read the news, and learn what’s going on in the world. I get the newspaper on Saturdays and Sundays, and the TV program is listed there, and that’s how I figure out what I want to watch.”

Cass, born in Lithuania in 1923, lives with his daughter and son-in-law, Judie and Wolf Dorak, in a one-bedroom home in a quiet subdivision in Virgil. His journey here has not always been easy.

“I was around 20 years old,” Cass said, “and Lithuania was occupied by communist Russia. I said to myself, ‘if I stay, the Russians are going to hand me a rifle and tell me to go and fight in Berlin.’”

Lithuania remained independent until the Second World War, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union. Following a brief occupation by Nazi Germany after the Nazis waged war on the Soviet Union, Lithuania was again absorbed into the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years.

“The communists were here before the Germans started the war and I saw their system and their rules,” he said. Cass determined that he needed to leave home. “When the war finished, I was in Germany and they were saying ‘go home’, but if I went home, I would end up in Siberia, because I was a traitor, you see. I was supposed to stay there and fight the Germans.”

Siberia was used by the Russian empire as a place of exile, sending people to work in agricultural camps in the region.

In Germany, Cass stayed in a displaced persons camp, a temporary facility for refugees or internally displaced persons, for four years post-war.

“In Germany, at the very end there was a shortage of food. They gave you only so much, then said, ‘we are finished, everyone must go home’. But I know if I went home the train would pass Lithuania and go straight to Siberia.”

“I stayed in Germany for four years before they opened immigration. First they opened immigration to England and I said ‘too close — get the hell out altogether.’ Then they opened to Australia and I said, ‘too hot, I don’t like the heat.’”

Cass eventually immigrated to Canada in 1948 where he had two choices. “Either work in the bush or for the Canadian Pacific Rail. I applied to CPR. and I came to Halifax on an American boat.”

From Halifax, Cass was transported to Saskatchewan and worked for CPR for six months, including another six months in the bush cutting trees for lumber. He didn’t speak a word of English, but made friends with a group of Lithuanians.

“Our home was on the side of the line. Two boxcars — one for the water and the kitchen and the other one was the bunk beds. It was not bad, but in the summertime, the mosquitoes were bad.”

“We worked to pay for our trip because we didn’t have anything. My pants, a shirt, a jacket and that’s it.”

While in Saskatchewan, Cass heard that “the KGB, the secret police for the communist country, were telling emigrants to ‘go home! We are going to give you land over there, and money, everything you need.’”

“Well, they got homesick and said ‘we are going home and we will write a letter to you.’ They went back home and we never heard anything. They went straight to Siberia.”

“For years, I couldn’t write home while I was in Canada because that was a ticket for my family to Siberia. They didn’t know where I was. I could not tell them where I was. After Stalin died, I wrote that I am still alive. For 13 years they didn’t know if I was living or dead.”

Cass never returned to Lithuania. His mother and father died, but he had a good relationship with his sister, Julia, until she died a few years ago. Julia visited him in Canada in 1991 and again in 1996.

After a year in Saskatchewan, Cass moved to Toronto and worked preparing meals for flights in the Cara Operations department at the Toronto Airport.

Cass married Rita in 1950 and they had three children, but Rita passed away in the late 1950s and Cass lost his children to the Children’s Aid Society.

“The Children’s Aid Society wouldn’t let him keep children because men didn’t keep a family in those days,” explained his daughter. “They said it was best to be adopted. There were three of us and we were separated.”

Eventually Dorak “put an ad in a Lithuanian newspaper and a friend of his read it and informed him that I was looking for him. We reunited about 38 years ago,” said Dorak, who has since reunited with one brother, who recently passed away, and another brother who lives in Alberta.

“We are all connected now,” said Dorak. “Cass has six grandsons and seven great-grandchildren.”

Judie, who works from home, and Wolf, retired, raised their family in Brampton and moved to Niagara-
on-the-Lake in 1996. A year later, Cass moved in, enjoying long drives along the Niagara Parkway.

Despite his tumultuous past, Cass still feels strong. “Oh, I feel younger. Especially going through the wars and all that stuff,” he said.

He suggests that a possible reason for his longevity is that he quit smoking. “One day, I said I am going to stop smoking. And I haven’t had one cigarette since.”

Dorak added, “he doesn’t smoke, and rarely drinks. He has a full breakfast, lunch, and sometimes doubles up at dinner,” she laughed. “Judie is a good cook,” added Cass. “Any dish that she makes is a good one. She never hears me complaining about it.”

Cass has no regrets in life, mostly because he chose Canada to be his home. “For me, everything is good. You live in a good country and you have got to be happy that you are here. Germany at that time wasn’t a friend to ‘ausslanders.’ We were considered second-class citizens.”

Cass credits optimism for his good health. “It’s no good to be a pessimist. Some people say, ‘this is not good, that is not good.’ For me, everything is good.”

“I read about politics,” he said. But he doesn’t let that bother him. “I say the politics in the world goes one way and my mind goes another. Instead, I think about what is going on around the house or what I am going to have for the next meal,” he joked.

“My eyes are still good but I cannot read for too long. When I was younger I could read for eight hours without stopping, but now I read for an hour or so and my eyes become blurred.”

Cass told The Local he did not feel qualified to give advice to younger generations. “I cannot say anything and I cannot advise anyone, because I like certain things, and someone else likes other things, and we are all individuals, with different ways of thinking. He might say, ‘you’re an old guy, you know nothing about it.’”

Technology, however, has shifted so much in the last 50 years. Cass has a cell phone, which he rarely uses. In fact, his friends have to call Dorak to ask him to turn his cell phone on. He was amazed by video calls with his sister.

Cass, who had insisted his 99th birthday be held at Wayne Gretzky Winery, will be celebrating his 100th birthday with family and friends at The Pillar and Post. Mindaugas, his grandnephew from Lithuania, will be here for the festivities, allowing Cass opportunity to speak in his native language. He will be busy, said Dorak, with family and friends for a week-long birthday celebration. “Busy drinking vino!” Cass quipped.

Cass, who still wonders how he got to this age, is enjoying his quiet life. Sometimes, “I walk down the middle of the street because the sidewalks are snowed in. If a car comes, they see me and they detour around me.”