He’s 100 years old and still bowling strikes. His secret? ‘Only the good die young’

Two days before his 100th birthday, Bob Parsons spent Monday evening as he usually does — at the Rose Bowl knocking down a few pins with his league. 

He started bowling soon after he retired. Thirty-odd years of camaraderie and doing his best to avoid life’s gutter balls.

“Frankly, I’m not sure how I got here,” he said during a recent interview in the bright condominium on Côte-St-Luc Rd. he and his wife, Dolores, purchased in 2006. (“We’ll probably only be here five years,” Dolores told the building manager at the time.)

“Some things don’t work as well as they used to. But you just have to put up with that.”

Bob Parsons gets ready to roll with the Wesley Bowling League at the Rose Bowl in N.D.G. on Monday, April 27, 2026, two days before his 100th birthday. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

The two dozen or so members of the Wesley Bowling League converge every Monday from September till May at the Rose Bowl (officially Quilles G Plus) in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, as they have for decades.

Bob’s on track to win the prize for perfect attendance. Again. 

“He never misses a Monday,” club president Nora Brown said. “He bowled a 200 this year. I mean, he’s a good bowler. A very good bowler.”

His average is closer to 160 these days, which annoys Bob a little. He’s bowled 290 twice in his life (just short of a perfect 300).

On Monday, he started with three strikes in a row.

“I hope I can do the same as him,” said Pino Mininni, 68, a youngster in a league that counts at least three members in their 90s. “Hopefully one day I’ll be that age.”

Larry Kredl gives Bob Parsons a fist bump and other players celebrate after Parsons rolled his second strike in a row in the Wesley Bowling League at the Rose Bowl in N.D.G. on Monday, April 27, 2026, two days before Parsons’s 100th birthday. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

In May, Bob and his wife are hosting 100 people at their home to celebrate his birthday.

“My daughter said: ‘Who at 100 still has 100 friends?’” said Dolores, 94.

“They have a better social life than I do, and it’s amazing,” said daughter Jennie Parsons. “That’s the secret, I think, of growing old. One, keep moving. And two, when your friends die off, get new friends.”

Asked for his secret, Bob says: “It’s because only the good die young.”

Brown says it’s because he keeps moving.

“He does things,” she said. “He’s interested in things.”

Bob was raised in Exeter, Ont., close to London. His father ran a nearly 400-acre farm, raising pigs and cattle, and growing beans and hay. The youngest of five, Bob worked from an early age. Drafted into the Second World War at 18, he spent two weeks training in London before being called back because the farm couldn’t manage without him. 

His mother died when he was nine months old. Two of his sisters contracted polio, and one didn’t make it. Housekeepers helped raise the children. 

“They were hard workers. And they valued life,” Dolores said. 

“He never misses a Monday,” the Wesley Bowling League’s president says of Bob Parsons. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

Bob and Dolores met at a family dinner in North Bay, Ont.  She told her mother later that night he was the man she would marry. 

They will celebrate their 70th anniversary in June. Dolores credits the four-poster bed they’ve shared for seven decades for their long union. 

“When you have a bed that small, you can’t be angry at each other for long.”

They had three children, which led to five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 

Bob worked 38 years as an office manager at Canadian Pacific’s head office in Montreal. They raised their kids on Benny Ave. in N.D.G.

In retirement he took up golf, and kept at it till he was 95. He quit because his partners, younger men all, wanted to use carts. 

“The only reason I’m out here is to walk,” he said.

Maintaining a social life through golf, bowling and playing bridge have all contributed to Bob Parsons’s longevity, he says. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

He volunteered for Meals on Wheels for nearly 20 years, then at the food bank run by St. Monica’s Church, where Dolores has been an organizer for over half a century.

There are two types of Catholics, she says: the pious kind, and the party kind. “We’re the party kind.” Although, technically, Bob isn’t Catholic. But he’d been climbing the ladder to help decorate for dances for so long, the priests made him an “honorary Catholic.”

Maintaining a social life through golf, bowling and playing bridge have all contributed to his longevity, Bob said. He quit smoking at 29 (“This is plain stupid,” he told himself one day), ate pretty much whatever he wanted, and enjoyed his beer and scotch, although there’s less of that now. He’ll sometimes eat food past its due date because he thinks a little bacteria helps spur the immune system. He still subscribes to The Gazette. His doctor refused to give him a disabled parking sticker for his car a couple years back because he walks without a cane.

Avoiding family squabbles has always been paramount. Jennie remembers bashing the family car into the side of the house when she was 18.

“He didn’t yell or scream. He just said I would pay half of the repairs, and that was the end of it,” she said. “I think my dad’s motto probably was ‘Peace at any cost.’ He valued family above everything.”

“You don’t get mad at each other,” Bob said. “You work it out.”

Bob Parsons has been bowling for more than 30 years, but values family above everything, his daughter says. “You don’t get mad at each other,” Bob says. “You work it out.” John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

And of course, there’s bowling.

On Monday, the Rose Bowl presented him with a framed photo honouring more than 30 years of bowling and 100 years of living.

The 22 members of the Wesley Bowling League got him a cake with three candles — a one followed by two zeros — and sang him Happy Birthday.

Then they got on to bowling. They grimaced at bad shots, humbly celebrated the strikes, made fun of each other and cheered one another on amid the eternal clatter of falling pins.

After his first three strikes, Bob’s scores settled down a bit. He had one gutter ball and finished with a 138. “Not too bad for a guy like me,” he said.

“To be here is something else.

“It’s amazing.”

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Bob Parsons started his night with consecutive strikes at the Rose Bowl in N.D.G. on Monday, April 27, 2026, two days before his 100th birthday. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

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