Vincent Meredith - Private Life

Private Life

The Merediths shared a passion for horses, and were said to have had a fine eye for them. Vincent rode with the Montreal Hunt, played polo in Senneville, Quebec, and they both imported many fine horses from Ireland and England. His youngest brother, Llewellyn Meredith (1860–1933) J.P., was a highly respected judge at the Olympia, London Horse Show in England, and also bred his own horses at his farm outside London, Ontario. Sir Vincent was also a keen fisherman. Both he and Lady Meredith had a great interest in music and art and were one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Grand Opera in Montreal. He belonged to many clubs in Montreal and England, and he was amongst the founding members of the Mount Royal Club in Montreal, the Ritz-Carlton Montreal Hotel and the Montreal Winter Club. The Montreal Gazette said of him :

Outwardly stern and commanding in appearance, he was really kind-hearted, considerate and tolerant. No situation ever deprived him of his poise. He never gave way to violent anger, preferring the rapier to the bludgeon as a weapon. A flash of his eye and a sarcastic phrase was sufficient to puncture conceit, rebuke stupidity or quell insubordination

Sir Vincent Meredith died in 1929 without children, and as such his short-lived baronetcy became extinct. His wife continued to live in their Montreal home until 1941, when she gifted it to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal to use as a nurses residence. McGill University acquired the use of the property in 1975, and today it is known as Lady Meredith House, home to the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law. He and his wife are buried in a plot reserved for the Meredith family at Mount Royal Cemetery. Buried there also is one of his younger brothers, Charles Meredith, with his wife, a daughter of Richard B. Angus, and his cousin, a close friend of both of the brothers', Frederick Edmund Meredith. This generation of his family in Canada, and Ireland, were a remarkably distinguished group.