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1846-1936 Walker started a military career while he was still quite young. By age 20 he had achieved the rank of Captain from the Toronto Military school and subsequently enrolled at Kingston’s Royal Military College. During these early Ontario years, Walker distinguished himself as a leader, organizing a military unit in his hometown and fending off the Fenians during the raids of 1870. He joined the North West Mounted Police when it was established in 1874, and was in partial command of the three hundred officers that marched to western Canada in that same year. Walker spent the next six years with the N.W.M.P., serving at Forts Battleford, Walsh, Pelly and Fort Calgary. In his role as Indian Agent and negotiator, he earned the trust of both the settlers and the aboriginal community. James Walker married Euphemia Quarrie in 1876. The couple had one son named Selby. Early in 1881, Walker resigned from the force and was hired as manager of the new 100,000 acre Cochrane Ranch, west of Calgary. After two years on the ranch, he saw the economic potential of sawmills. He became one of Calgary’s first manufacturers with the establishment of Bow River Mills sawmill on the banks of the Elbow River. Walker supplied timber to the settlers and to the Canadian Pacific Railway for railway ties and bridges. Soon his business was thriving. He invested in real estate, primarily in East Calgary, and became known for his honesty, fairness and refusal to exploit buyers when the market was "hot." Walker continued to maintain his military ties as commander of the large southern Alberta district between the Red Deer and Highwood Rivers. He was promoted to the rank of Major in the Canadian Mounted Rifles in 1899, and was commander of the 15th Light Horse when the province of Alberta was formed in 1905. When the World War I broke out, the 69 year-old Walker volunteered and led a battalion of the Canadian Forestry Corps that served in England and Scotland. Throughout his life James Walker contributed to the City of Calgary through a wide range of initiatives and activities. The list of achievements is long. He is credited with laying the first sidewalk, stringing the first telephone line and providing the city with its first commercial and residential natural gas illumination supplied from a well located on his property. He founded the Calgary Agricultural Society (forerunner of the Calgary Stampede), served as first school trustee, the first justice of the peace and the first Boy Scout leader. Given the scope and breadth of his accomplishments before he died in 1936, it is small wonder that Walker was named Citizen of the Century. To date, a Calgary park, building and school have been named in his honour.
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© Calgary Public Library. 2000
Walker,
Colonel James