CORBEIL, ONTARIO, Aug 15: Ending days of speculation, The Guinness Book of Records on Thursday named a 116-year-old Canadian woman the world's oldest person.

Marie-Louis Febronie Meilleur, who turns 117 later this month, smoked cigarettes well into her 90s, still hangs tough and spends her time looking for a mate for her 81-year-old son, relatives and caretakers say. ``She's a person who really wants to live and she's a fighter.

The reason she is so well, I'm sure, is that she's a good eater and drinker,'' said Muriel Boissonneault, a nurse at Nipissing Manor Nursing Care Centre in the northern Ontario town of Corbeil.

Muriel said the phones started ringing early Thursday morning with messages of congratulations. ``We told Madame Meilleur, but I'm not sure she understood what The Guinness Book of Records is,'' she said.

Marie-Louis is almost totally deaf and blind. Even so, Marie-Louis, who has spent nine years at Nipissing, still makes a project out of finding a match for her octogenarian son. With documents confirming her birth on August 29, 1880, Marie-Louis gets the title last held by Jeanne Calment, who died on August 4 this year in her native France at the age of 122.

Marie-Louis has been married twice and has about 300 descendants. Relatives said the secret of her long life was hard work and keeping active: she used to enjoy fishing and still loves the outdoors. She also is a vegetarian.

``She often told us kids that hard work will never kill anyone and I guess she was right,'' said Rita Gutzman, her 72-year-old daughter. Rita recalled her mother's reaction when she recently learned she was the oldest Canadian.

``Her response was `poor Canada','' the daughter said adding, ``I don't know what she's going to say about this.'' Jean Boss, one of Marie-Louis's 75 living grandchildren, recalls memories of a no-nonsense grandmother. ``She wasn't someone you could push around, not a submissive woman at all. She always had a cigarette dangling from her lips as she worked,'' he said.

Marie-Louis was born Marie-Louise Febronie Chasse in the town of Kamouraska, Quebec, 95 miles east of Quebec city along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence river.

The London-based Guinness verified her age through her certificates of birth and baptism, census records, two marriage certificates and other documents. Marie-Louis's nurses said they were planning a huge celebration when she turns 117 on August 29.

``We'll throw a big party with the family, media and townspeople,'' Muriel said. Not far behind Marie-Louis is Sarah Knauss of Philadelphia, United States, who has documents to prove she will be 117 on September 24.

Staff at a Pensacola, Florida, nursing home plan to celebrate the 121st birthday of their senior-most resident, Augusta Watts, on Friday. Guinness, however, does not recognize her evidence, social security records, as adequate.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.