25 Queen Street

Walter “Blondie” Taylor

Walter was born in Paris in 1922, and enlisted when he was 17 years old. He had already dropped out of Paris High School to work with his father, E.J. (Ernest Joseph) Taylor at Taylor’s Barber Shop at 27 Grand River Street North. Ernest served in the Canadian Forces in the First World War. The family was living at 25 Queen Street.

He joined the Argyll and Southern Highlanders (Princess Louise’s Regiment) in Hamilton in early 1940. He was first sent to Welland, Ontario for training in how to properly guard a waterway. Things did not get off to a good start. The Commanding Officer asked why he didn’t have proper boots. He hadn’t been issued a pair, he explained, because he signed in late. That misdemeanor cost him three days’ pay.

Next, he was off to Jamaica where the Argylls spent a year guarding an Allied prisoner of war camp. He moved on to Belgium, then Holland and finally Berlin where he was blown out of a slit trench, causing knee damage that plagued him for the rest of his life.

He left the Canadian Armed Forces in 1946 and returned to the barbershop, which he ran with his brother John (“Rip”) and sister Dorothy (“Dot”). Later that year, he married Ethel Marie Thomson of Windfall in Oxford County, Ontario. They lived first at 60 Washington Street and then later at 27 Queen Street, beside his parents. When they died, he built a new house on the site of 25 Queen. The couple had five children. Walter and Ethel both died in 2017. They are buried together in the Paris Cemetery.