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Bob Butler no longer calls himself an optician. But the 94-year-old still works two days each week at Mount Pleasant Optometry Centre, offering assistance to colleagues and customers.

On January 2, Butler is looking forward to the eyecare business’s 70th anniversary at the southeast corner of East Broadway and Quebec Street.

He was there on the opening day and has remained employed through four owners. This year, Georgia Straight readers voted Mount Pleasant Optometry Centre as the city's best optometry clinic in the annual Best of Vancouver issue.

“When I started, there were loads of old houses in the area,” Butler recalls in an interview with the Straight inside the shop. “It’s a nice area, much nicer than it used to be. It used to be tough.”

As part of the neighbourhood’s redevelopment, Butler says many of those houses were torched.

There have been some equally dramatic changes in eyewear. One of the most noteworthy, according to Butler, was the switch from glass to plastic lenses.

“Another major change was going from bifocals into progressive lenses,” he adds.

When asked what he likes most about his job, Butler replies that it’s solving customers’ problems.

“Most people are very nice,” he insists.

Mount Pleasant Optometry Centre will celebrate its 70th anniversary on January 2. Mount Pleasant Optometry Centre

Nowadays, opticians undergo extensive education and have to pass a national licensing exam. That wasn’t the case when he was young.

“Actually, I started working in a wholesale lab in Saskatoon,” Butler says. “When I started, there was no education along that line at all.”

His three children have given up asking him when he plans to retire. And his fame has spread far, thanks to a mural about him on the nearby Belvedere Court apartment block.

It was created for the Vancouver Mural Festival in 2016 by Jay Senetchko and Drew Young.

“I have family in Newfoundland who’ve seen it on Facebook,” Butler says.

It might come as a surprise to some to learn that he isn’t the oldest British Columbian still practising his craft.

On Friday (December 27), long-time Victoria columnist Jim Hume will celebrate his 96th birthday and he’s still writing articles on his website, The Old Islander.

Hume recently blogged that his dad once took him to watch an airshow with First World War–era Royal Air Force planes.

“It was beyond dreams that summer day that years later, I would sit with my own sons and watch a man land and walk on the moon, and that flying for my children and me would one day become a tiresome necessity,” Hume wrote.

This mural featuring Bob Butler was unveiled at the 2016 Vancouver Mural Festival. Amanda Siebert

Another nonagenerian is Queen Elizabeth, who said in her Christmas Day message that she couldn't imagine when she was young that a man would walk on the moon.

So what’s the secret to being able to continue working as a nonagenarian?

Butler doesn’t know. However, he says, working keeps his mind active.

“I exercise quite regularly,” Butler quickly adds. “Right now, I use a stationary bike.”

And his eyesight is still good enough to enable him to continue driving to work from his home in Burnaby.