Military Figure. He was the last surviving officer of the first detachment of Canada's North West Mounted Police, which was established in 1874. Born the fifth child of John and Margaret Walker, by the age of 18, he was running the family's farm, as his elder brother was handicapped from a childhood accident. He attended school at what is now the Royal Military College of Kingston in Ontario. At age 18, he had joined the Canadian Militia at the rank of ensign, to bring law and order to the Western Canadian plain. Prior to joining the North West Mounted Police, Walker had considerable military experience and had seen service in the Second Fenian Raid. In 1871 he assisted in organizing the 77th Wentworth Battery, acting as major and adjutant. He was appointed superintendent and sub-inspector of one of the six troops, his commission bearing the signature of His Excellency, Lord Dufferin, then Governor-General of Canada. When the scarlet-coated riders arrived in Winnipeg with the erect young superintendent riding jauntily at the head of his troop, fewer than 100 settlers lived west of Fort Garry. In 1874, Walker was only 28. He spent six years policing the prairies. His first glimpse of Calgary came in 1880, when he was transferred from command of the police at Battleford to the command at Fort Walsh. In the fall of 1880, Senator Matthew Henry Cochrane approached Walker to manage the Cochrane Ranch, a large cattle ranch. Upon taking this position, he resigned the force to assume his new duties on the ranch. The Cochrane Ranch lease covered more than 100,000 acres of land of both sides of the Bow River, extending from Calgary to Morley. In selecting headquarters for the ranch, he was forced to a momentous decision. If he had not decided to build the headquarters in the center of the ranch, most of the city of Calgary might have been owned by the Cochrane Ranch Company and the town of Cochrane might never have existed. However, Walker started the town of Cochrane by building the Cochrane Ranch house at the foot of the big hill, beside the Big Hill creek. Early in 1882, Walker had seen the need for a sawmill in the growing community, especially with the construction of the C.P.R. being pushed farther and farther out west. He persuaded the Cochrane Ranch Company to start a small sawmill, locating it between Kananaskis and Canmore. After resigning as manager of the ranch late in the summer of 1882, he became the manager of the sawmill. In the winter of the same year, he established a homestead, on what is now known as the Colonel Walker Estate in East Calgary on the banks of the Bow River. On this property the late A.W. Dingman drilled the first gas well of the district, about 1908. Walker's son, William James Selby, later turned the Walker property into the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. A resident of the Calgary for 55 years, the name Walker is linked inseparably with the city's early development. Among his many claims to recognition in Calgary are the following: First Immigration agent; owner of the first telephone system, in 1884; chairman of the civic committee responsible for the enactment of the first bylaws of the settlement, and in 1884, for its incorporation as a town; first civilian justice of the North West Territories (now Alberta); organizer of the first mail service; first president of the exhibition company and responsible for getting the present site for Victoria Park; built many of the city's first buildings, including the Mounted Police barracks; organized the first school; school trustee 15 years, during which he was chairman of the building committee and was responsible for erection of all but three of Calgary's early stone school buildings; organized the first militia unit, the 15th Canadian Light Horse; started the cadet movement and organized the Alberta Boy Scout movement, being its first president; was a member of the first hospital board and continued until the city took over hospitals; first president of the Southern Alberta Pioneer Association. He also donated land for the Colonel Walker school in Calgary. In 1913 he was president of the Canadian Cavalry Association. During World War I, he promptly volunteered in 1914 for overseas service at the age of 68. He was called upon to recruit a company of men in Alberta and Eastern British Columbia for the 238th Forestry Battalion, and they went overseas to France and Scotland to cut wood for the trenches. As a seventy-year-old, he was the oldest soldier to be deployed overseas. Previously he had been announced an honorary Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian Militia in 1911 and in 1913 was commissioned honorary colonel being then in Command of the 2nd Regiment Alberta Mounted Rifles. Identified almost continuously with the militia throughout his life, at the time of his death he was honorary Colonel of the 15th Canadian Light Horse, which he organized in July of 1905. At nearly age 90, he died and was given a military funeral. For all his accomplishments, Colonel Walker was chosen as Calgary's Citizen of the Century in 1975. Mount James Walker, located at the head of James Walker Creek, west of the Kananaskis River in Kananaskis Country, was named in his honor.