| Main entry | Roddick, Amy Redpath |
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| Birth place | Montreal, Quebec |
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| Birth date | 16 May 1868 (baptised in London, England, 16 August 1868) |
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| Death place | Montreal, Quebec |
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| Death date | 16 February 1954 |
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| Identifier | 0338 |
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| Birth name | Amy Redpath |
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| Married name | Roddick, Lady |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | Anglican |
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| Other work | doctor's wife |
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| Biography | Amy Redpath (1868-1954) was born into one of the principal families of nineteenth-century Montreal. Her father was a partner in the family enterprise of refining sugar and also distinguished himself as a military man; her mother was the daughter of a mayor of Montreal. After private tutoring at home, Amy attended a select girls' school in Montreal and supplemented her formal education with trips to England and Europe. With her cousin, author Lily Dougall,* she journeyed across the United States to California. Life for Amy, however, was far from transient. Throug her twenties and thirties, she acted as matriarch of her family household, attending to a long list of domestic responsibilities while attending to her ailing mother's many physical and emotional needs. In 1901, tragedy struck the Redpaths in the form of a mystery that still remains unsolved: on June 13, Amy's mother and youngest brother, Clifford, were discovered shot to death in their Montreal home. Five years later, at the age of 38, Amy became Lady Roddick, the second wife of one of Canada's most prominent medical practitioners, Sir Thomas Roddick (1846-1923). Her life continued in the heart of Montreal's elite social milieu: passionate about the arts, she spent the majority of her time within the city's Square Mile, Mount Royal Park, and Westmount, and travelled often to Europe and New York. Although she had long harboured literary aspirations, most of her books did not appear until she was a widow in her fifties; she eventually published over a dozen volumes of verse, plays, and verse drama. She became a benefactor of McGill University, and donated both to the institution's Roddick Gates and the Redpath Library. In 1939, she was initiated into the Bear Clan of the Iroquois at Caughnawaga in recognition of her sympathetic books about Native culture, and in 1948 she received a gold medal from the Schroeder Foundation of St. Louis for literary achievement. Her dedication to her written work and to the Canadian aboriginal community are evidenced in her 1954 obituary in the THE MONTREAL DAILY STAR, which pays less attention to Amy's family circles than it does to her generosity and skills. |
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| Travel | England, 1892, 1923; Bermuda, 1925; France, 1926; California; New York |
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| Other notes | Amy's closest friend was Mary Rose Shallow, a maid in the Redpath home on Sherbrooke Street who accompanied Amy on almost all her travels, including Amy's honeymoon. |
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| Honours and awards | Gold medal for achievement in literature, Shroeder Foundation (1948) |
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| Residences | Montreal, Quebec (1868); Europe (c1868-); Montreal (1871-1954) |
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| Geographic regions | Quebec |
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| Primary genres | poetry; drama |
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| Books | THE FLAG, AND OTHER POEMS (1918); THE ARMISTICE, AND OTHER POEMS (1919), THE SEEKERS: AN INDIAN MYSTERY PLAY (1920); THE BIRTH OF MONTREAL (A CHRONICLE PLAY) AND OTHER POEMS (1921); THE ROMANCE OF A PRINCESS: A COMEDY, AND OTHER POEMS (1922); IN A VENETIAN GARDEN, ST. URSULA: TWO PLAYS (1926); FROM MONTREAL ELSEWHERE (1929); I TRAVEL TO THE POET'S MART (1936); THARBIS: A POETIC DRAMA (1937); THE TOMAHAWK: A PLAYLET, AND OTHER POEMS (1938); THE IROQUOIS ENJOY A PERFECT DAY, A CHANCE MEETING, AND OTHER POEMS (1939); ENGLAND'S OLDEST COLONY (1940); WAITING'S WEDDING, AND OTHER POEMS (1941) |
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| Periodicals | CANADIAN BOOKMAN; MONTREAL GAZETTE; MONTREAL POETRY YEAR BOOK (1929, 1930, 1931, 1934. 1937, 1946); MONTREAL STAR; MONTREAL WITNESS; WORLD WIDE; NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY; |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Canadian Authors Association, MONTREAL IN VERSE (1942); Creighton and Ridley, NEW CANADIAN ANTHOLOGY (1938); |
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| Organizations | Canadian Authors Association |
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| Father's name | John James Redpath |
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| Life dates of father | 19 January 1834, Montreal, Quebec - 4 June 1884, Montreal, Quebec; m. 1867 |
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| Father's note | army major; businessman |
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| Mother's name | Ada Maria (Mills) |
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| Life dates of mother | 26 April 1842, Montreal, Quebec - 13 June 1901, Montreal, Quebec; m. 1867 |
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| Mother's note | daughter of John Easton Mills, mayor (1846-47); suffered from ill health and melancholia; summered at New York sanatoria; along with youngest son, Cliff, was shot to death at the Redpath family home in Montreal; the death remains an unsolved mystery; left sizeable estate solely to her children |
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| Spouse 1 | Sir Thomas George Roddick |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 31 July 1846, Harbor Grace, Newfoundland - 20 February 1923, Montreal, Quebec |
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| Spouse 1 note | Assistant House Surgeon at Montreal General Hospital, first chief surgeon at Royal Victoria Hospital; Professor of Clinical Surgery, later dean, McGill; Conservative MP (1846-); President of Canadian Medical Association and of British Medical Association; first wife, Urelia McKinnon |
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| Marriage 1 date | 3 September 1906 |
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| Marriage 1 place | England |
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| Biographical references | Adams & Theodore, "The Redpath Mansion Mystery," GREAT UNSOLVED MYSTERIES IN CANADA, Department of Canadian Heritage (Web); WOMEN OF CANADA (1930); Canadian Newspaper Service, NATIONAL REFERENCE BOOK (1940); Obituary, THE MONTREAL DAILY STAR (16 February 1954); 1871 Census of Canada; 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; Canada, Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924; Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935; London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906; New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 170, 446 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | diaries, McGill University; correspondence, Redpath Sugar Museum, Toronto |
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| Image credits | Image from Alan Creighton and Hilda M. Ridley, eds., A NEW CANADIAN ANTHOLOGY (Toronto: Crucible, 1938). |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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