The event was attended by both Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Robert L. Borden and both men reflected privately on old-age after the gathering.

“Sir Wilfrid spoke briefly and I followed. Senator Wark spoke in reply for twelve or fifteen minutes as brightly and clearly as if it were his fiftieth, instead of his hundredth birthday,” Borden recalled decades later. “He lived to be nearly one hundred and three. It is said that when he was about ninety-five, he made a vigorous protest against delay in advancing the work of the session, declaring that he, in common with many other members, was anxious to return home and attend to his business affairs.”

“In returning with Sir Wilfrid from the Senate,” Borden continued, “on that occasion he said to me: 'Borden, I should not care to live a hundred years.' And indeed, there was good cause for that thought. Loneliness must cast a shadow upon one who lives so long that all the friends, not only of youth and middle-age but of old age as well, have passed on before him. Sir Charles Tupper (who was well into his 90s when he died), in speaking of himself, used to quote Dr Samuel Johnson: 'Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.' But up to the end, he took an intense and active interest in life; and I could never observe any sensation of loneliness.”