Walter Redpath and the Messenger
The surviving Redpath Messenger leads us back to a farm boy with mechanical ideas, an Omemee foundry, a succession of inventions and the uncertain beginnings of Canada’s automobile industry.
The Car That Survived
Look at the Redpath Messenger and it barely resembles the automobile we know today. It is small, open and doorless—a lightweight runabout from a time when people were still working out what motor travel might become.
Built in Berlin, now Kitchener, Ontario, in 1903, the Messenger used a single-cylinder gasoline engine. It weighed about 650 pounds, could reach a reported 16 kilometres per hour and sold for approximately $650. The Canadian Automotive Museum describes it as the second gasoline-powered car built in Canada and the only known surviving Redpath automobile.
Those measurements describe the Messenger. They do not explain how it came to be.
Imagine trying to build an automobile in 1903. How would power reach the wheels? How would the driver steer, change speed or stop? Who could cast the components, build the body and assemble the machinery? Where would the money and skilled labour come
from? And once the car was finished, where—and on what kind of roads—could anyone drive it?
The Messenger used a shaft-drive system when many early automobiles still relied on chains. It had a two-speed transmission and a wooden-and-brass steering wheel that could be adjusted. Its body belonged to the world of carriage building; its mechanical systems belonged to an automobile industry that was still being invented.
We could begin on the Berlin factory floor. But inventions rarely begin with the finished object.
The Messenger was not built in Kawartha Lakes. Part of the knowledge behind it, however, was developed in Omemee. Before entering the automobile business, Redpath worked with agricultural and industrial machinery, operated a foundry and machine shop, helped produce equipment for local communities and pursued other mechanical inventions.
The surviving car is our clue. Follow it backwards and Walter Redpath becomes more than an automobile manufacturer: he was also an inventor, foundryman and metalworker—and, before all of that, a mechanically curious farm boy.
For us, it is never just a car.
The 1903 Redpath Messenger, built in Berlin—now Kitchener—Ontario. The surviving automobile is held by the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa. Image courtesy of the Canadian Automotive Museum.