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John Redpath (1796-March 5, 1869) was born in Earlston, Scotland. After training as a stone mason, he emigrated to Canada in 1816. Around 1818, having settled in Montreal, he established his own construction company and became increasingly involved in the Presbyterian parish of Saint Gabriel. On December 19, 1819 he married Janet McPhee (1791-1834) in the parish church, and the couple would go on to have seven children: Elizabeth, or “Betsy” (1819-1883), Peter (1821-1894), Mary (1823-1893), Jane (1825-1828), Helen (1827-1883), Jane Margaret (1829-1897) and John James (1834-1884).

In the years following his first marriage, Redpath worked on a number of projects in the Montreal area. These included establishment of the British military installations on Île Sainte-Hélène, construction of the Lachine Canal and the stonework for Notre-Dame Church. Between 1827 and 1832, he and his partner Thomas McKay were responsible for the construction of a series of locks on the Rideau Canal, an undertaking that obliged Redpath to reside in the region for several years and that ultimately earned him substantial profits.

Once this project was finished, Redpath returned to Montreal and diversified his interests, rising rapidly to become a leading member of the city’s business community. In 1833 he was elected to the board of directors of the Bank of Montreal, and over the following decades he invested in the shipping and mining industries, in several insurance companies and in the Montreal Telegraph Company, as well as acquiring and managing numerous properties, including several located on Mount Royal and bordering the Lachine Canal.

In 1834 Janet McPhee died in a cholera epidemic that had struck Montreal. Later that year Redpath married Jane Drummond (1815-1907), and together they would have ten children: Margaret Pringle (1836-1906), George Drummond (1839-1877), Williamina (1841-1842), Isabella Agnes (1844-1846), Francis Robert (1846-1928), Charles Andrew (1848-1849), Augusta Eleanor (1850-1910), Emily Jane Bonar (1853-1941), Harriet Ina (1854-1858) and William Wood (1858-1881).

During the 1830s and 1840s Redpath took an active part in Montreal’s social and political life. He was a member of the St. Andrew’s Society of Montreal and of the Constitutional Association during the Rebellions of 1837-1838. It was also around this time, in August 1837, that he completed construction of his house Terrace Bank, which occupied a large estate on the slopes of Mount Royal. Between 1840 and 1843 he served on Montreal’s City Council, and he was briefly a member of its Board of Works. In 1849 he was appointed president of the Annexation Association of Montreal, a movement that, though short-lived, was extremely popular among the city’s wealthiest citizens: in response to dissatisfaction among the business community concerning British economic policies toward the colony, it advocated Canada’s annexation to the United States.  

Aside from his business successes and his incursions into politics, Redpath provided financial and often administrative support to a number of Montreal institutions, associations and religious organizations (the latter mostly Presbyterian). These included the Mechanics’ Institute, of which he was president from 1840 to 1843, the Montreal General Hospital, the Temperance Society, the Montreal Presbyterian College, the Presbyterian Canada Foreign Missionary Society, the Presbyterian Labrador Mission, the Magdalene Asylum and the French Canadian Missionary Society. In 1857 he also helped found the Saint James’s Club, of which he would remain a member for the rest of his life. That same year he invested in the construction of the Victoria Bridge (the first bridge to span the Saint Lawrence River), which had been under way since 1854.

The venture for which John Redpath is best known, however, is the establishment in 1854 of the Canada Sugar Refining Company (now Redpath Sugar). Located originally on the banks of the Lachine Canal, the Redpath refinery – the first of its kind in Canada – owed its immediate and remarkable commercial success largely to government economic policies that favoured its business model, which was based on the importation of sugar by sea from the West Indies. After running the enterprise for several years, Redpath gradually handed over the reins to his son Peter and his son-in-law George Alexander Drummond. This process was accelerated in the late 1860s, as his health declined.

John Redpath died on March 5, 1869, in Montreal.

Sources:

Tulchinsky, Gerald. (1977.) “Redpath, John.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Accessed via: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/redpath_john_9E.html

Feltoe, Richard. (2006). A Gentleman of Substance: The Life and Legacy of John Redpath (1796-1869). Toronto: Dundurn. Accessed via: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mcgill/detail.action?docID=3256519