Baird, John W.

• Jack Baird

John “Jack” Wesley Baird, National Defence Dockyard supervisor and electrician, was born 28 July 1907 in Windsor, Nova Scotia, to Captain Charles W. Baird (ca.1870-1927) and Hannah Eugenie Stoddard (ca.1870-1933), sixth of seven children. Jack attended Kings Collegiate School in Windsor until 1926, active in hockey, rugby and track & field. He was a member of the Colchester Hants Regiment of the Active Militia and spent a summer training at York Redoubt in 1927. In 1928, he worked briefly at Canadian Gypsum Co. in Windsor, NS before moving to Ontario where he worked on large construction projects in various towns for Ontario Hydro 1929-1933. He moved back to NS in Feb 1933 and took engineering at King’s College (became Dalhousie University) until 1937 but did not finish the program. He met Marion Constance “Connie” McGrath, an elementary school teacher, at Avon Farms near Windsor, NS, in the 1930s and married her in 1942. They moved to Bedford in 1944. Constance Baird taught primary school in Dartmouth in 1960s. From 1942 to 1944 Jack worked as an electrician at the Clark-Ruse Aircraft Plant in Eastern Passage, NS, then as a civilian for the Royal Canadian Navy at the HMC Dockyard in Halifax repairing instruments, 1944-1946. By 1957 he was Dockyard Supervisor for the Department of National Defence. He enjoyed cars, sports, photography, camping, fishing and sailing. He co-owned a fishing camp on Panuke Lake in 1920s and 1930s and he was a member of the Bedford Yacht Club in the 1960s. He died May 30, 1975.

2018-04-13 created

Contents of the fonds.

Karen White