Family
At Rosedale, July 17, 1851 ("the sun shone in unclouded majesty and we had the most delightful breeze"), Meredith married Anne Frances (Fanny) Jarvis (1830–1919), the eldest and favourite daughter of William Botsford Jarvis of Rosedale by his wife, the grand-daughter of William Dummer Powell, Mary Boyles Powell. Rosedale, Toronto, previously the Jarvis' 120-acre (0.49 km2) estate is now Toronto's wealthiest residential district.
Meredith's wife enjoyed "a blessed childhood, with love on all sides", though she was undoubtedly spoilt as the eldest and prettiest daughter. In 1835, to celebrate her fifth birthday, her mother planted a sapling which has since grown into the famous Rosedale Elm. When she was seven she crept out of bed to witness "a magnificent masquerade ball (at Rosedale) that a whole generation of Toronto party-goers would hold benchmark the rest of their lives." She loved horses, keeping two for her carriage and another for cross country adventures, when she would sport a low-crowned beaver hat with a green veil. Her summers were filled with constant riding parties and picnics, including 'a never-to-be-forgotten adventure: Bark canoes paddled by Indians through five miles (8 km) of rapids', whilst on a visit to cousins at Hawkesbury, Ontario on the Ottawa River. She spent two years at finishing school in Paris (where she was delighted to witness the barricades being flung up in the streets during the French Revolution of 1848) before returning to Canada to spend the winter of 1848/49 in Montreal with the family of Edmund's brother, William Collis Meredith, beginning her courtship with Meredith.
After living in Quebec City and Ottawa the Meredith family, with the help of 'a handsome inheritance' from Meredith's Aunt Bella in 1879, finally retired to Toronto. On what had been the apple orchard of the original Rosedale they made their new home, 'a spacious, white-brick house of twenty two rooms', where he died 12 January 1899. Meredith Crescent in Rosedale is named in his memory.
The Merediths were the parents of eight children. One of their daughters was the mother of Escott Reid and another married Archibald McLean, grandson of Chief Justice Archibald McLean, a close friend of Mrs Meredith's father. Their eldest son, Arthur, married Isabella Osler, niece of Sir William Osler, and after Arthur's death in 1895 with her children including Allen Osler Meredith she lived with another of her well known uncles, Sir Edmund Boyd Osler. Their younger son, Lt.-Colonel Colborne Powell Meredith (1874–1965) was Commissioner of the Ottawa Improvement Commission (1908), President of the Ontario Architects Association (1912), and Councillor of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He designed many of the principal buildings and residences in Ottawa, including the Château Laurier Hotel, as well as a number of schools and convents throughout Canada. From 1925 to 1934 Colborne Meredith served as General-Secretary to the League of Nations Society of Canada. Their nephew was Sir Augustus Meredith Nanton.
| “ | Of all the faces of Edmund Meredith to be found in the family papers, by far the most beguiling is Meredith the paterfamilias. Unlike Fanny, who was sadly self-centred and who also had a lamentable tendency to be fussily over-pretective, Edmund was a relaxed, confident parent, never happier than when horsing around 'having a capital time with my chicks' (as when playing battledore and shuttlecocks down the length of the dining room with his seven year old son, in his seventies) and ... His son Coly remembered 'Unlike the typical Victorian father he never ordered me to do anything, when he wanted something done, one knew that it should be done... At times the confusion made by small children must have been trying, but he never lost his temper or showed irritation. When one considers his own very lonely life as a child, one marvels at his being able to become such a perfect father. | ” |
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—Sandra Gwynn, 'The Private Capital' |
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Read more about this topic: Edmund Allen Meredith
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