Born in Torono, Ontario, he was educated in Toronto public schools, Harbord and Oakwood Collegiates, and graduated from the University of Toronto in English and History (Modern), in 1918. He joined the editorial department of “The Toronto Daily Star” the same year. In 1931 he was assigned to cover a story on rum running activities carried out on the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. He took a photograph of a fishing village which later won a prize in a New York show. He then decided that he would like to make a painting from the photograph and received the assistance of a “Daily Star” artist in doing the work. By the next week he had constructed a paint box which he then stocked with paints and other necessities for sketching. Roy Greenway continued to paint and to establish himself a fine reputation as an artist.
Over the Years, he has exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy, the Montreal Society of Artists, the North Shore Arts Association of Gloucester, Massachusetts (member), and elsewhere. He has painted in the United States (Portsmouth, N.H., and NYC), Italy (Venice), and in England (Cornwall). In Toronto, on his way home from work, he sketched scenes of old buildings and streets now demolished. A few of them included old streets and buildings on the present site of the Hospital for Sick Children. These sketches he presented to the Hospital where they have been hung in the library.
Once he spent two years in research and several days walking over the battle site at Queenston Heights (where Isaac Brock was killed) in preperation for a painting of the event. The “Star” reported him as follows, “Mr. Greenway...first visited the Queenston Heights battle scene of the War of 1812 a year ago. He has since revisited the spot several times scaling the hill, walking the paths and generally, for the sake of accuracy, attempting to envision the bloody encounter of Redcoats and U.S. Troops. For background, he visited the National Archives at Ottawa, where Brock's military tunic, with the hole from the fatal bullet, is on display. He also say at the archives the colourful sash which Chief Tecumseh presented to the general at Detroit in front of British troops and bands of Indians, with the works: 'This is a man.' The result is a 25 by 30 inch canvas depicting Brock being felled while leading his troops up Queenston Heights. The painting, Mr. Greenway explained, is a preliminary to an almost identical, but larger on 5.5-6.5 feet.”
Roy Greenway had been a reporter for “The Toronto Daily Star” and the “Star Weekly” for over 50 years. He held a solo exhibit at Victoria College (U of T) in 1958 when Hugh Thomson noted his work as follows, “Mr. Greenway sees beauty in nature, often in the most commonplace scenes, and paints it as he finds it, with no heightened effects. All is quietly poetic. Sometimes you can tell he paints a scene because it strikes his newspaperman's fancy for the picturesque—human interest.”
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977
