Robert Wilson Reford was born in Montreal in 1867. The eldest son of Robert Reford and Katherine Drummond, he was educated at Upper Canada College and Lincoln College, Sorel. His father was the founder of the Robert Reford Company, a shipping company established in Montreal in 1866. In 1888 he began his apprenticeship in business, working as a purser on board on a Thomson Line vessel in the Mediterranean. In March 1889 he was sent to Victoria to act as the assistant manager of the Mount Royal Rice Mills, a company his father had founded in 1882 and which had rice mills in Montreal and Victoria. There he was placed in charge of the Thermopylae, the former clipper ship which Robert Reford had acquired in 1890 to carry rice from the Far East to Victoria. He then worked in shipping offices in Antwerp and Paris. On his return to Montreal, he joined the staff of the Robert Reford Company. He married Elsie Stephen Meighen in June 1894 and they had two sons, Bruce and Eric. In 1902 they built a residence at 3610 Drummond Street designed by architect Robert Findlay.

Robert Reford enjoyed photography and painting. Acquiring one of the first Kodak cameras in 1888, he became one of Canada's most prolific amateur photographers. During his sojourn in British Columbia, he photographed the Haida villages on northern Vancouver Island, the Chinese community in Victoria and the Mount Royal rice mills. These photograph albums were donated by the Reford family to the National Archives of Canada and are considered to be among the treasures of the archive's collection.

Made a partner in 1906, Robert Reford succeeded to the presidency of the Robert Reford Company on the death of his father in 1913. In 1919 he was made a director of the Cunard Steamship Company Limited. The Robert Reford Company was agents for the Cunard White Star from 1911. Tickets for the Cunard liners departing from Montreal were sold from the Reford agency buildings in Montreal and Toronto. Robert Reford was also active in the business and political life of the city. He was President of the Montreal Board of Trade in 1912. During the war he was the vice-president of the Montreal Branch of the Canadian Patriotic Fund. He served as President of the Canadian Club from 1915-16. Robert Reford's primary passion was collecting art. He put together one of the largest collections of European and Canadian art in Canada. His collection included more than 200 works by European artists ranging from Agnolo Bronzino to Claude Monet. Robert Reford's collection of Canadiana was even more extensive, with several thousand items, paintings, watercolours, coins, medals and silver. He was a governor of the Art Association of Montreal and a member of the museum committee of the McCord Museum. He was also an artist himself and spent many hours sketching at Metis and at his hunting camp, Cariboo, in the lakes and forests south of Rimouski. Diminished by diabetes and cancer, he died in Montreal on 15 November 1951.