Fonds RC0397 - John E.S. Taylor fonds

John Emeric Stuart Taylor was born on 13 August in 1886 in Bridgenorth, Ontario. He spent his boyhood in Ontario graduating from high school in Peterborough. With his family he then moved to Saskatchewan where taught school and got his law degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

He joined the 214th Light Horse Regiment of Saskatchewan with the rank of Lieutenant in 1916. However, he went overseas as unattached officer, and by then a married man. Once there he served as a Musketry Officer with an unnamed regiment and then as Assistant Adjutant at a Canadian Discharge Depot. While in England he was joined by his wife Elva who became pregnant with their first child. On 14 September 1917 he arrived in France, attached to a newly organized brigade of the Canadian Corps with the purpose of constructing and maintaining railways behind the lines. He saw both the battlefields of Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge. After the war ended the brigade was ordered to prepare the railways in advance of Canadian troops en route to Bonn, Germany. Taylor did not return to Canada until May 1919. He resumed his law career, practising first in Windsor and later in St. Catharines. He also spent time in Northern Ontario during the Gold Rush.