Edith Lillian Meek Gardiner
Pianist, accompanist, teacher, people person. Born on June 14, 1924, in Vancouver; died on May 6, 2014, in Mississauga, Ont., from complications after a fall, aged 89.
When she was 21, Edith Meek travelled alone from Vancouver to Toronto to study piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music. She went on a full scholarship, with very little money but with a determined spirit.
At the "Con," she met baritone Glenn Gardiner, a young war veteran, and wrote to a friend that it was her "fondest hope to become a musical team" with him. They married in 1946 and were loving partners, in life and professionally, for the next 65 years. The couple settled in Port Credit, Ont. (now part of Mississauga), where they raised son Lynton and daughters Shirley, Anne and Louise.
For decades, Edith taught piano in their home, from early mornings until late in the evening. Many of her hundreds of students became lifelong friends. In the 1970s, Glenn became a voice teacher at the Con, and she his accompanist. The voice students received a two-for-one deal, with Glenn as the sensitive encourager, and Edith as the disciplined perfectionist. Gifted with perfect pitch, she had no tolerance for missed beats or out-of-tune singing. The team continued teaching passionately until 2010, when they were both in their 80s.
She never learned to ride a bike, swim or drive a car, but Edith was a wonderful self-taught cook and loved to entertain with dinner parties. She happily passed on her recipes for butter tarts (her secret was a spoonful of rum), cookies, shortbreads, and macaroni and cheese.
Edith loved stories, both the ones she told and those of people around her. She valued the written word as much as the spoken and believed in the importance of the hand-written letter. Her final Christmas letter, in her distinctive handwriting, went out to 150 of her closest friends and relatives. But newspaper editors, members of city council and the CBC were also on her frequent mailing list – she was never shy to voice her opinions. The one exception to her skepticism about new technology was her excitement about the daily slide show of pictures of friends and family on her daughter's iPad.
After Glenn's passing in 2011, her family was greatly concerned about Edith's well-being. When she moved into a retirement home, Palisades on the Glen, they worried about how she would fare. But she embraced, and was energized by, her new community and all of the people and stories that came with it. Edith loved her time there, enjoying many a lunch and dinner with friends, new and old. But just after Christmas, 2013, she fell and broke her hip. Used to a vibrant social life, she struggled with the slow pace of recovery and the complications that eventually set in.
May 6 was always a significant date for the Gardiners. On that day in 1942, RCAF pilot Glenn's plane was shot down over Belgium. On May 6, 1945, he was liberated after three years as a prisoner of war. On May 6, 1948, he and Edith welcomed their first child. It seems fitting that May 6, 2014, marked the date of Edith's passing.
Brian Evans is Edith's son-in-law by marriage to her daughter Anne.