Cause of death Blood clot Name Marie-Louise Meilleur | Children Gabrielle Vaughan | |
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Known for Oldest validated Canadian ever Parent(s) Pierre Chasse (1849–1911)Febronie Levesque (1852–1912) Died April 16, 1998, East Ferris, Canada Spouse Hector Meilleur (m. 1915–1972), Etienne Leclerc (m. 1900–1911) | ||
Marie-Louise Fébronie Meilleur (née Chassé; August 29, 1880 – April 16, 1998) was a French Canadian supercentenarian who, upon the death of Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, became the world's oldest recognized living person. Meilleur is the oldest validated Canadian ever and the fourth oldest person in history, behind Jeanne Calment, Sarah Knauss and Lucy Hannah.
Biography
She was born in Kamouraska, Quebec, where she married her first husband, Étienne Leclerc, in 1900. After he and both of her parents died in 1911 and 1912, Meilleur left two of her four surviving children in 1913 and moved to the Ontario border. Only once, in 1939, did she return to the Quebec area. She had six children by her second husband, Hector Meilleur, whom she married in 1915. After his death in 1972, she lived first with a daughter and then in a nursing home in Corbeil. Of her 12 children, only four survived her. She had 85 grandchildren, 80 great-grandchildren, 57 great-great-grandchildren, and four great-great-great-grandchildren. Meilleur smoked tobacco into her nineties.
She became the oldest living person in August 1997, after the death of 122-year-old Jeanne Calment. By the time she died of a blood clot at age 117 in April 1998 in Corbeil, Ontario, one of her sons was also living in the same nursing home, and her oldest living daughter, Gabrielle Vaughan, was 90 years old. She was buried alongside her second husband in Swisha, where she had previously lived.