Meribah Aikens: 2007 Citizen of the Year

When Meribah Aikens retired in June 1992 and her husband, the local Presbyterian minister Eldridge Aikens passed away a few weeks later, she became grief-stricken and confused as to what to do with her life.

“Once September came, I came to realize that I was either going to become a bitter old lady or I was going to be busy,” Aikens admitted candidly. “I am busy! I fill my life with a lot of interesting things.”

Due to her many charitable, church, and community efforts, the Mount Royal Municipal Association recently named her their 2007 Citizen of the Year. Aikens will receive the Schofield Trophy, named after the late Isabel Schofield, after its June 6th annual meeting. It’s bestowed on someone who has made a significant and voluntary contribution to Town life.

However, as a humble person, she cannot quite understand why she was chosen. “I was certainly taken aback. The Town is full of people who do important things.” Being awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal a few years ago for her various community services was her last previous honour.

The northern New Jersey farm girl was taught “good values” such as helping others and doing right and sang in the church choir. Attending the Westminster Choir College at Princeton, she met her future husband who was taking his Master’s in Theology there.

Returning to Mount Royal in 1952, the couple “built” the local Presbyterian Church, she said, and for the next 36 years, she was quite active in church affairs. After raising a daughter and a son, Aikens started her working life as a freshman advisor at McGill where she ran many student services and retired in a middle-management position.

After her horrible summer of 1992, Aikens started her new life by taking a Creative Writing course at Concordia and then working on and receiving an English Literature degree at McGill. There she ran the Creative Writing course for 10 years at its adult-education division, headed several of its committees for many years, and taken many courses as well. For the past 13 years, she has also been involved with the annual McGill Book Sale that gives out the funds for bursaries and scholarships.

Within TMR, Aikens was the receptionist at the VON foot clinic for seniors for many years. She has also been very involved in the Meals on Wheels program both locally and at her church, St. Andrew’s and St.Paul’s where she’s also an elder responsible for 15 members of the congregation who come from TMR.

At her church over many recent years, Aikens was also chair of its Worship and Music committee, its outreach committee, is the choir librarian and, until last year, sang in its choir.

Her community work also included a two-year stint at Tyndale-St. George’s after-school program, read hundreds of hours of text and course material to tape for visually-impaired McGill students, and rode in the Dans la Rue bus at night for two summers to feed homeless youth.

“It was quite an eye-opener seeing many distressing things,” she said. “But since I was older than the social workers, I had the kids’ respect and could get away with saying more to them. They would have otherwise told me where to go.”

Aikens doesn’t see anything exceptional about what she does since everyone has the same 24-hour day and it’s only a matter of organizing your time. Asked why she has done all of these good works, Aikens simply replied: “If people need help and they ask, you’re expected to give it. I feel that it’s the right thing to do.”