John Redpath was born in Earlston, Berwickshire, a town in the Lowland Borders of Scotland. His parents were Peter Redpath, a farm worker, and his second wife Elizabeth Pringle from neighbouring Gordon. John was bornin 1796 during the period of the Lowland Clearances (which was caused by many things, including the potato blight) and resulted in agricultural workers losing their livelihood and it was probably this that drove John, like so many other Scots, to leave for Canada. However, he had learned the trade of stonemason from a George Drummond in Edinburgh, so when he embarked for the “new world” in 1816 at the age of 20, he had a trade, if no money.
When he disembarked at Quebec City, which was the required point of immigration (Grosse Isle had not yet been established as a quarantine centre) he was virtually penniless. In order to save money and his only pair of shoes, he walked barefoot from Quebec City to Montreal, where he quickly found employment as a mason in the flourishing construction industry. On December 19, 1818, he married Janet McPhee from Glengarry County, with whom he was to have seven children. He was also in time to witness the installation of the first oil street lamps in Montreal on Rue Saint-Paul.
Redpath’s immediate Montreal career makes two things abundantly clear: there was a clear need for skilled masons in Montreal and Canada as a whole and no job was too small or too large for John Redpath. Within a short time, he had developed his own construction business and had an abundance of work for it of all sizes. He repaired chimneys, built walls, hearths, privies, fireplaces and walkways. His company worked on the military site on Isle St. Helen as well as the Theatre Royal at the corner of St. Denis and St. Paul – a job that brought him into contact with the owner, John Molson for whom he did work on the Brewery and with whom he would later become a close business and political ally. He also did work on Nelson’s Column on Place d’Armes, the fledgling McGill University, Notre Dame Basilica, the new Bank of Montreal building and the property of the Montreal Masons (Grand Master -- John Molson).
Indeed, John Redpath had built up such a reputation for industry and competence that when an enormous and lucrative contract became available for construction of the canal and locks of the Lachine Canal – a project to bypass the rapids at Lachine that had been dreamt of as early as 1689, but had never gotten done – Redpath’s company, with the financial backing of the BMO, took it on. The successful completion of the canal turned Montreal into one off the largest ocean ports in North America when it opened in 1825.Not only that, but the land along the new canal, which had belonged to the Sulpician Order, was now opened to development and was soon sold to various land speculators and developers. This area became the new industrial heartland of Montreal, and spawned the areas of Little Burgundy, Point St. Charles and Atwater. It was also, coincidentally, became the home of the Redpath sugar refinery. Because of the easy port access, water power (and later, steam power)this became the industrial capital of Canada.
Redpath had been in Canada only nine years and was living on Dalhousie Square (between St. Hubert and Berri on Notre Dame E.). The success of the Lachine Canal construction project enabled John to team up with Thomas McKay to build the gargantuan Rideau Canal project between 1826 and 1828. Included in its 202 Kilometer span from Ottawa to Kingston were the locks at Jones Falls which included a dam that was twice the size of the largest dam in North America at that time. During the project, Redpath managed a small army of navvies and lived for a length of time in Kingston where he stayed with the Drummond family and met Robert Drummond and his sister Jane (who were probably related to the Drummond family which had given him his start in Scotland).
When the project ended, John Redpath walked away (as did the other partners) with a clear profit of 20,000 pounds – an enormous sum in those days. John chose to spend his money in two ways: he invested heavily in the new Bank of Montreal, Molson’s Ottawa steamboat line, and land in Montreal. He also embraced the civic life and proclaimed his presence as a new member of the city wealthy. He gave to charity, joined the board of the Montreal General Hospital (founded in 1821) and was appointed an Alderman for the City of Montreal – serving eight successive terms.
In 1834 John’s wife Janet died giving birth to their seventh child (John James Redpath) and John spent some time in Jones Falls and then in Kingston. On September 15,1835 he married Jane Drummond, of Kingston and returned with her to Montreal where they had, eventually, ten children. Their first daughter, Margaret Pringle Redpath, was born in 1836 and John bought 235 acres of land on the slope of Mount Royal from the Desrivieres family (James McGill’s in-laws and heirs) and built Terrace Bank on his own Redpath Lane (now the top of Mountain Street), another of the amazing Montreal Mansions that opened up that area of the Mountain for the wealthy elite. The area still carries the Redpath name: rue Redpath, Redpath Crescent, place Redpath. This mansion, like so many others, would bethrown on the garbage heap by the people and the city of 20thcentury Montreal. At the same time, Redpath found himself increasingly drawn into the fierce political wrangling that engulphed the Canadas in the late1830’s. A fierce “loyalist” (and a wealthy conservative) he banded together with John Molson and others to create the Constitutional Association in the battle for English minority rights (control) and led a demonstration to that effect on Oct. 23, 1837 in Place D’Armes. Two weeks later the Patriotes raised a liberty pole on the very same spot. When the “rebellion” broke out, Martial Law was declared and John sent his family to Kingston. The rebellion in Quebec was to lead to 12 hangings and 58 deportations.
Redpath brought his family back to Montreal and in 1840 the two Canadas were united into one. John focused his energies increasingly on business and his growing family. However, he remained on the new City Council from 1840 until 1843 and during this time he ceded the land which became Drummond Street to the city in return for it being named after his second wife (on May 13, 1842). It was not named after General Gordon Drummond as is sometimes reported. In 1848 Montreal entered a serious economic recession and in 1849 the Canadian Parliament buildings in Montreal were burnt to the ground by an English mob, after the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill. Redpath was not present (being at home attending the birth of a child) but was there, no doubt, in spirit. But the political situation in Quebec had reached such a low that Redpath, Molson and a number of other prominent businessmen signed a petition calling for annexation by the United States. The uncertainty of “business prospects” led Redpath to decide to create (once again) his own opportunities and open the first sugar refinery in the Canadas.
First, he went, in 1850, to study the business in Britain and to learn about the equipment he would have to acquire. When he returned, he was to witness the great East-End Fire of 1852. This fire broke out on July 8in a wooden tavern on Grand Rue St. Laurent (the Main). The new city reservoir was, at the time, drained and being repaired and the winds that day were hot, dry and strong. One quarter of the city was destroyed and 10,000 (out of57,000) were left homeless. The next year John returned to England and Edinburgh to purchase refinery equipment. He re-acquainted himself with his first employer George Drummond and engaged George’s son George Alexander Drummond as a junior partner in the new business. This would eventually make George Alexander Drummond one of the most important businessmen in Canada and a Canadian Senator.
It is important to note here that John Redpath, coming from a labouring class background, had an inherent distrust of the aristocratic power structure in Great Britain and did not view England as the “Mother Country,” as many other Canadians did. He would fight a long-running war with British authorities and, later, Canadian authorities on the subject of tariffs. It has been argued that his support for American annexation was a way of leveraging the British Government to create a more favourable (for Redpath) tariff situation, which partially resulted in the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. After all, tariffs were a large factor in causing the American Revolution.
In 1853, construction began on the first Redpath Sugar refinery in Montreal. The architect was John Ostell, who had done the towers of Notre Dame Church and the Arts building at McGill and had become the city Surveyor in 1840. He had also been the surveyor of Redpath’s Mount Royal property where Terrace Bank was built. This was an era, it should be remembered, when people wore multiple headwear. Ostell was a surveyor, and an architect. He was also a businessman and a real estate speculator. As a surveyor he was the preferred surveyor of the Seminaire de Saint-Sulpice and he subdivided the seminary’s land holdings along the Lachine canal during the period from 1842 to 1845. He also bought a few of the choicest lots himself, along Priest Basin (yes, that's where the name came from) and elsewhere. When Redpath bought his land (also on Priest's Basin) for the refinery, Ostell was not only his architect but also his neighbour. The refinery opened on Aug 12, 1854.
Sugar cane, whose original area of origin seems to have been India was grown widely in temperate Europe and has been used separately as a desert, a medicine (it cures hemorrhoids, apparently) and a dessert. It was brought to the West Indies by Columbus and rapidly became a cash crop that fueled the fortunes of English (and other) plantation owners. It was produced by indentured (virtually slavery) whites and Carib natives and then by African slaves. It became the earliest justification of the African slave trade and it could be argued that sugar, and the extraordinary wealth that it brought to plantation owners was the most important factor in creating the slavery of the Americas. It would be replaced, economically, in the U.S. by cotton. The battle for the abolition of slavery was begun in the 1780’s in England and the boycotting of sugar was a major weapon. In 1833 the Emancipation act outlawed slavery in the British Empire and emancipation itself arrived to the Caribbean in 1838. While Redpath’s English Caribbean source of sugar did not rely on slavery there is a stain on the history of sugar.
Within a year the plant was turning out a variety of products from Maple Sugar (brown and white) to “refined Manilla”, “molasses” and “Crushed X” (2 types), all of which were exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855. At the same time as running the refinery he was the permanent head of the building committee over-seeing the rapid expansion of the Bank of Montreal to Brockville, Belleville, Coburg, Guelph and Hamilton. Not surprisingly, in1857 he took his son, Peter, into the refinery business renaming it John Redpath & Son, Canada Sugar Refinery. In the same year, his “apprentice” George A. Drummond married John’s daughter Helen and in 1861 joined the firm a sa partner. This turned out to be a wise move for the firm.
Despite multiple battles with governments over tariffs the refinery became a major player in the Montreal economy, employing a large number of employees and processing annually about7,000 tons of raw sugar a year, brought from the West Indies on Redpath owned ships. The profits in 1858 (the year that his son William Wood Redpath was born) were $40,000. In 1859 they were $89,500. Redpath became Vice President of the BMO and President of the Board of the Montreal General Hospital (as well as the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Society and the Presbyterian Labrador Mission). In addition to the refinery and other business interests, John put his profits into the Montreal Towboat Company, the Montreal Telegraph Company, and the Montreal Fire Assurance Company. He also helped to found the Mechanics Institute (today’s Atwater Library).
The outbreak of the American Civil war threw everything into confusion. Prices fluctuated and raw sugar was hard to get hold of. The end of the Civil War brought the Fenian raids and more uncertainty and Redpath increased his diversification of investment. He committed substantial funds to develop the economies of Quebec's Eastern Townships, including investments in the Capel Copper operations (a copper mine near Lennoxville which still offers underground tours), the Belvedere Mining and Smelting Company, Rockland Slate Company, Bear Creek Coal, and Melbourne Slate Co. Two new ships were added to the fleet: the Helen Drummond and the Grace Redpath.
In 1867 John Redpath made his last visit to Great Britain to attend the wedding of his son John James to Ada Maria Mills. More and more in these last years, the business of the refinery had been placed in the hands of Drummond and in 1868 John Redpath formally retired and placed his share of the business in the hands of his son Peter. Drummond became the manager as Peter had very little interest and preferred to visit Europe and spend his money, often on philanthropy. McGill owes its multiple buildings named Redpath to Peter, who endowed a Chair of Mathematics and built both the Redpath Museum and the Redpath Library. Peter emigrated to England in 1880.
In April 1868 John Redpath had a stroke and died on March 5, 1869. He was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery. His sugar company endures today although it is no longer connected to the family or Montreal, but his signature is still on the bags of sugar and his legacy is still in the Lachine canal.
