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Robert Wiener doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.

Sure, he turned 110 years old last month, possibly making him the oldest man in Canada. And the honour did earn him a birthday card from Queen Elizabeth herself.

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But Wiener dismissed the accolades with a wave of his hand Monday.

“It’s not like I won the Nobel Prize or saved someone’s life. I’m just old,” said Wiener, a retired dentist and former McGill University professor. “I just inherited good genes from my parents. It’s that simple.”

Wiener’s mind is still sharp. He’ll recount his childhood in Outremont down to the finest detail — the way cars along Mont-Royal Ave. would be replaced by horse-drawn sleds in the winter or the way children swarmed the icy streets and turned them into a hockey rink.

He can even remember what he was wearing the day he began courting his future wife Ella by a lake in the Laurentians.

“I wore my McGill University sweater,” he said. “I had to look respectable.”