OTTAWA — The smell of warm blood oozing across the fields and roadways of battlefields was Paul Metivier's most vivid -- and horrifying -- memory of World War One.

He was just 16 when he enlisted but he, along with so many others, lied about his age, telling authorities he was 19.

Metivier, who lived long enough to be among Canada's handful of surviving Great War veterans, died last Wednesday at age 104.

With his death, Canada has only six surviving World War One veterans.

Metivier had been in failing health over the past several months, said his daughter Monique Metivier of Ottawa.

"But he still insisted on going to the cenotaph at the National War Memorial for the celebration of Nov. 11, then insisted on accepting an invitation to the Governor General's for tea afterwards,'' she said.

Metivier lived his final days in a suite at an Ottawa retirement home, not far from where he raised his family in the city's Sandy Hill area.

Metivier grew up in Montreal and enlisted there.

He joined the 4th Division Ammunition column and used mules to carry ammunition to the guns behind the front lines.

"I did the things you can do with horses,'' he once recalled, adding that he earned $1.10 a day in the army and sent $20 a month home to his mother in Montreal.

Metivier was awarded the French Legion d'honneur for his service in France.

Veterans Affairs officials said Metivier, whose son Roland was killed in action in 1942, never refused an invitation to represent World War One veterans.

He also showed up every year for Remembrance Day ceremonies at Ottawa's War Museum and the National War Memorial and regularly made appearances in the House of Commons.

Speaking about his role in countless Nov. 11 ceremonies, Metivier once said: "When I'm there, I think of my son, I think of my past and I hope that the care we take for veterans and the remembrance will continue.

"They gave their lives for Canada so it seems to me that they deserve to be remembered.''