16 Facts About John Redpath

John Redpath 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.

John Redpath was born during the period of the Lowland Clearances that created economic hardship and dislocation for many Scottish families.

In 1816, with limited funds for ship passage, the nearly penniless John Redpath disembarked at Quebec City before walking barefoot to Montreal, Quebec.

John Redpath was involved in major projects such as the construction of the Lachine Canal and locks that proved key to future commercial development of the city of Montreal.

John Redpath helped finance the Montreal Telegraph Company and the Montreal Fire Assurance Company, serving as a director of both companies.

John Redpath committed substantial funds to develop the economies of Quebec's Eastern Townships, including investments in the Capel Copper operations, the Belvedere Mining and Smelting Company, Rockland Slate Company, Bear Creek Coal, and Melbourne Slate Co.

Understanding that fighting these powerful forces in Britain was costly and nearly impossible, along with other businessmen who had invested in Canada, John Redpath lent his support to the Annexation Movement in Canada in an effort to leverage the situation.

John Redpath was sat on Montreal City Council from 1840 until 1843.

John Redpath was a director of such charitable institutions as the Montreal General Hospital.

John Redpath 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.

John 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.

John Redpath was a benefactor of the first endowment fund established for McGill University.

John 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.

John Redpath built a large family home overlooking Montreal on the slopes of Mount Royal, having purchased it from the Desrivieres family who had lost a long court case against the trustees of what was to become McGill University.

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.

The poem stirred controversy, and John Redpath Sugar declined to have Moritz read it at the celebration ceremony because it touched on the sugar industry's early reliance on slave labour.