Anna and Jakob Boersma were sitting at one of the six tables with playing cards in hand, waiting to lay their bowers on the line. The Boersmas were often at the top of their game. Once Anna took home an ornament of an eagle on a stone she won during a tournament and now she's brought her love of card playing to the computer age.

Anna has taken her love of card playing to the computer age. While she is speaking, she guides a mouse across a computer screen, clicking on the computerized version of playing cards. She drags the cards across the screen and sorts them according to the rules of solitaire. The sharp and robust 84-year-old woman, wearing a turquoise and purple floral print dress, says her children find her attachment to the computer game amusing.

“I just love it,” Anna says.

“It takes your mind off of (everything) else. It’s fun, you know.”

Anna has taken to a computer set up in the lounge at Kentwood Park, OMNI’s long-term care home in Picton. When Carol Ann Frost attended a supportive measures training session through home office earlier this year, she came back armed with an idea for her home. Instead of discarding or selling a computer that was being replaced in one of the offices, she suggested setting it up for the residents.

Anna says she’s the only resident who uses the computer regularly. She heads down most mornings to the lounge and wheels her chair up to the computer desk for 30 minutes of solitaire before breakfast. “I’m a quick learner,” she says, noting it took her just a day to familiarize herself with the computer, despite never having used one before.

Anna has always been an avid card player whether she was playing a hand of solitaire at home or heading out to the Legion. Anna and her husband, who died in 1997, immigrated to Canada from Holland in 1952. Ten years later they settled into a 70-acre cattle farm, 14 miles north of Belleville, where they raised three boys and two girls. Her son, Herman, and daughter-in-law, Patricia, now live there with their two sons. Altogether, Anna has 13 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren.

She has lived at Kentwood since 2000. Anna enthusiastically talks about being surrounded by friends, her hobbies of knitting and crocheting and venturing out into the garden at the long-term care home.

“I enjoy life,” Anna says.

“I think that’s the best way to live.”

Anna returns to her game of solitaire but realizes she’s stumped. “Game over,” she says, glancing at her watch and noting aloud it’s almost 2 p.m. Time for bingo.