Amy Redpath Roddick — Obituary

Lady Roddick

A LONG life, filled to its end with varied interests and warmed by sympathy and understanding for the less fortunate and privileged who came within its compass, ends with the death of Lady Amy Redpath Roddick in her 86th year.

Nearly all of Lady Roddick’s life was spent in this city where she was born and in which by her family affiliations her interests, present and past, most deeply lay. Her marriage to one of the most distinguished members of the group of physicians and surgeons who brought fame to Montreal still further widened her contacts with her world and the great circle of her friends.

Lady Roddick’s greatest preoccupation was however with literature as poetry. She wrote a few longer poems, one mystery play with an Indian background and two other plays less well known. It was her shorter poetic vignettes and lyrics that made her best known and recognized a generation ago when a small volume from her pen appeared almost every year. Her best work was probably her small descriptive poems, inspired by a close and loving observation of nature. In later years she became greatly interested in the condition and future of the Indian population of Canada. In the Caughnawaga area she found much to claim her study and attention. As in many other directions, her interest in what she considered worthy of support took the form of generous aid and she helped materially to maintain some of the traditions and practices of the Indian civilization of an earlier day.

The years removed very many of the old friends, but Lady Roddick in one of the few surviving fine old Sherbrooke street houses remaining in use as a private residence kept her interest in a changing world still alive and discerning.

Source: Unknown, "Amy Redpath Roddick — Obituary," The Montreal Daily Star, February 16, 1954

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