After an initial education at "a home rich in cultural elements", he briefly attended the Hellmuth Boys College at London, Ontario, before joining the Bank of Montreal as a clerk in 1867. He steadily rose through the ranks to become the first Canadian-born president of the bank from 1913 to 1927. From his retirement until his death two years later, he served as chairman of the board. In Meredith's time, before the creation of the Bank of Canada in 1934, the Bank of Montreal acted as Canada's national bank, and Meredith successfully guided the nation's economy through the First World War.