Hi-Line Living: Bowling at 90

Ninety-year-old Inetia Cantin said she will bowl until she physically can't anymore. People close to her say that time is nowhere in sight.

Cantin can be found at the Havre bowling alley, Hi Line Lanes, every Thursday morning between 9 and 11, along with her daughter, Linda Warneke, and the other ladies in the league.

For Cantin, bowling in the women's league is the highlight of her week, she said. The bowling league she is part of these days is more about camaraderie among the ladies than it is about bowling. They drink coffee - "That's as strong as I can stand," Cantin said - eat donuts and bowl and have fun.

Cantin said she has been bowling since she was a teenager - "I probably started when I was about 18" - but added that she used to be better.

    "I'm not as good now as I used to be. I only bowl 139, but I used to bowl about 180 - old age," she said.

     The problem, Cantin said, is the curve just before impact.

"It misses the headpin," she said.

      She said she thinks she has always had the curve, but that as the years advanced she'd lost more strength and the curve has exacerbated.

Cantin is fairly pragmatic about her long love affair with bowling.

"I don't know how come I started. Probably somebody asked me to. So I've been bowling for years. I used to be a good bowler," she said.

She said guessed she probably started bowling when she was invited out and she hasn't stopped since. She said there's no sentimentality attached with the activity - she just likes bowling.

"I've always bowled and I've always loved it and I'm lucky enough that they would let me bowl, at my age," she said.

Warneke said her mother probably passed her love of bowling to her. Warneke also bowls, and she is also part of a night league.

Cantin was born in Nebraska, spent some time in Arizona, lived during her teenage years in Lewistown - where she met and married her husband - lived in Oregon for about 40 years of her life and has been in Havre for the last 17 years. Her husband died five years ago.

Cantin stopped keeping track of her age years ago.

"I don't even think about it," she said. "It comes and goes awful fast."

Cantin lives in the assisted living complex, Timber Creek Village, behind Kmart. One of the major reasons she chose the complex as her home is because she was allowed to bring her Siamese-mix cats, Shadow and Cricket.

Cantin doesn't have to worry about washing dishes or doing laundry at Timber Creek. So she has plenty of time to relax, and not only bowl, but enjoy other hobbies like painting.

        In her apartment hang several oil paintings, most of them with mountains overshadowing a cabin, pasture, field of lilies.

When asked what her favorite painting is, Cantin pointed to one in her living room with a bright mountain taking up most of the canvas. She said it's not any mountain in particular, but that it could be Mount Hood in Oregon. She wasn't concerned about figuring it out. Cantin said she paints all paintings from memory.

Warneke, her daughter, said her mother's art was featured in the Artitudes at the Atrium Mall and that she has sold pieces.