John Redpath

John Redpath (1796 – March 5, 1869) was a Scots-Quebecer businessman and philanthropist who helped pioneer the industrial movement that made Montreal, Quebec, the largest and most prosperous city in Canada. Redpath was born during the period of the Lowland Clearances that created economic hardship and dislocation for many Scottish families. As such, after gaining valuable experience as a stonemason with George Drummond in Edinburgh, the twenty-year-old Redpath emigrated to Canada.

In 1816, with limited funds for ship passage, the nearly penniless Redpath disembarked at Quebec City before walking barefoot to Montreal. Once there, he used the trade he had learnt back in Scotland to gain him employment in the construction industry, working as a stonemason. In November of that year, Redpath witnessed the first installation of oil streetlamps in the city on Rue Saint-Paul.

Business career Within a few years of arriving in Montreal, Redpath began running his own sizeable construction business.

Redpath was also a director of such charitable institutions as the Montreal General Hospital. He was one of the founders of the Protestant House of Industry and Refuge and a major donor to the Canada Foreign Missionary Society and the French-Canadian Missionary Society. Redpath was a supporter of the 1833 law that abolished slavery in the British colonies and served as the head of a small group that lobbied for government assistance to fight Montreal's "white slavery" traffic, working with the Magdalen Asylum in Montreal to aid impoverished immigrant women forced into prostitution. Having had limited education, Redpath was a strong advocate of learning. He helped establish The Presbyterian College, Montreal and the Montreal Mechanics Institute, now the Atwater Library. John Redpath was also a benefactor of the first endowment fund established for McGill University. His son Peter also endowed a Chair of Mathematics at the university as well as building the university's Redpath Museum and Redpath Library.

Personal Redpath was first married, on December 19, 1818, in Montreal, Canada, to Janet McPhee, a native of Glengarry, Ontario, and they had seven children before her death in 1834. The following year, on September 11 in Kingston, Canada, he married 20-year-old Scottish-born Jane Drummond, and they had ten children. Redpath built a large family home overlooking Montreal on the slopes of Mount Royal, having purchased it from the Desrivières family who had lost a long court case against the trustees of what was to become McGill University. The area still carries the Redpath name: rue Redpath, croissant Redpath, place Redpath.

Following his death in 1869, Redpath was interred in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.

Legacy

In May 2019, Toronto's poet laureate, Albert Moritz, composed a new poem that reused four lines from a poem John Redpath composed in 1858.