Patrick Reid (died on 5 December 2016, aged 91)
The full obituaries, which appeared in the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail, can be found here and here, respectively.
Patrick Reid died on December 5 2016 at Richmond General Hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was 91.
Patrick Lockhart Reid was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 14 November 1924 and grew up on a horse farm in County Donegal. His father, William, was a police officer; his mother, Kathleen a homemaker. At 15, he entered law school at Queen’s University in Belfast. But he didn’t graduate until 1948, because he enlisted in the British Army when he was 16.
In 1944 Reid graduated from Royal Military College in Sandhurst, England with the Badge of Honour. He soon saw action with the North Irish Horse unit in Italy, where he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. Then he was reassigned to the war in the Pacific, where he was involved in the liberation of Malaya, and was appointed Commander of the Military Police in Singapore in 1945 to 1947. He became the youngest major in the British Army when he was 21.
After the Second World War he travelled to 50 countries on assignment from the British Army. In 1954, he went to Kingston, Ontario to study at the Canadian Staff Army College and decided to immigrate to Canada.
There he worked with an advertising company, joined the civil service, and was the director of the Canadian government exhibition commission, which oversaw Canadian displays around the world. It was at this time that he also helped to create the country's Maple Leaf flag.
He married Alison in 1958 and together they had two children, Amanda and Michael.
Patrick Reid would go on to have a remarkable career in the civil service. He was Canadian Commissioner General at fairs in Italy, Japan and the United States, and was president of the International Bureau of Expositions in Paris from 1979 to 1983.
From 1978 to 1982 he was appointed the minister in charge of Canada House in London, England. From 1982 to 1986 he was Commissioner General of Expo 86, and he was Canada’s Consul-General in San Francisco from 1986 to 1988.
In recent years he was chair of the board for the Vancouver Port Corporation, the Vancouver Stock Exchange, and the Rick Hansen Man in Motion Society. He held many honours, including the Order of Canada.
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