JOCELYN CLIFFORD REDPATH

[ J. Clifford Redpath with dog ]

Unknown, Redpath Sugar Museum, J. Clifford Redpath, one of the victims, is shown here with the family dog outside the family home on Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal’s fashionable Square Mile district

Clifford, or Cliff as he was known in his family, the youngest child of Ada Mills and John James Redpath, was born on November 17, 1876. At his baptism on April 19 1877, sister Amy and brother Peter were his sponsors or godparents along with uncle Alex Dennistoun and aunts M.P. Dennistoun and Mary E. Mills.

We know very little about his early formal education except that he was a student at the Eliock School. Clifford entered McGill as a partial student in Arts in 1896-1897 and was accepted into Law in 1897. He graduated in 1900. While a law student, he apprenticed at the law firm of Campbell, Meredith, Allan & Hague, where he remained until a month before the tragedy. Only days before his death, Clifford submitted an application to write the bar examination which included a cheque for $30.

Clifford lived in the family home at 1065 Sherbrooke Street his entire life. He and sister Amy spent a great deal of time together. They attended many of the same social activities, and in her diary, Amy describes walking or riding on the mountain together several times a week. Following his death in 1901, his sister and a cousin immortalized Clifford in three poems: Amy’s poems were entitled, “Perfect in Thy Promise” and “On the Tablets of Memory J.C.R.”; his cousin’s poem hung for a time in the Syon Abbey, South Brent, Devonshire in England. Amy also established the Peter Whiteford and Jocelyn Clifford Redpath Library Fund in 1911.

Correspondence between Peter and Clifford reveals that Clifford, as the only son at home, was responsible for managing the family fortune albeit with the advice of oldest brother Peter and likely of his uncles. Clifford has been described as devoted and attentive to his mother Ada; as an adult, he traveled with her to upper New York State in the summer, kept her company, read to her during flare-ups of ill health, and oversaw her care whenever Amy was absent from the house.

Books

Diaries, Journals or Reminiscences

Miscellaneous

Parish or cemetery record

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Poetry