Stuart Wood

Stuart Zachary Taylor Wood, CMG, was born on October 17, 1889, in Napanee, Ontario, Canada. His father, Zachary Taylor Wood, CMG, served in the North-West Mounted Police from 1885 to 1915 and held the position of Acting Commissioner of the Force.

Wood attended the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and graduated in 1912. Following his graduation, he received a commission in the Royal North-West Mounted Police and served in the Force until his retirement in 1951. During World War I, he served as a lieutenant in the cavalry units in France and Belgium.

Upon returning to Canada in 1919, Wood held various roles in Yukon, including Justice of the Peace, Coroner, Sheriff, Game Inspector, and Customs Officer.

He became the acting Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the late 1930s. During his tenure as Commissioner from March 6, 1938, to April 30, 1951, Wood implemented numerous reforms. In 1945 and 1946, he established a system for the registration of aliens and addressed espionage cases. He increased recruitment in the northern regions by establishing new policing detachments.

Wood organized the RCMP Band, which was later disbanded in 1994 by Commissioner Inkster. He established the first RCMP scientific laboratory and museum in Regina, Saskatchewan, and founded a horse breeding station at Fort Walsh. He improved wireless communication and broadcasting capabilities and initiated a preventive policing program targeting youth. Additionally, he negotiated provincial policing contracts for Newfoundland and British Columbia.

Under his leadership, the RCMP gradually expanded, and scientific crime detection techniques were introduced to improve law enforcement and crime prevention. He retired from the RCMP in 1951 and died on January 4, 1966. Wood was buried in Regina, Saskatchewan.

In the 1950s, Wood was responsible for compiling PROFUNC, a top-secret government plan designed during the Cold War to identify and detain communist sympathizers. A 2010 investigation by CBC and Radio-Canada suggested that data gathered under PROFUNC may have been used during the 1970 October Crisis, when Canada invoked the War Measures Act and suspended civil liberties.

Regarding his personal background, Wood was the great-great-grandson of U.S. President Zachary Taylor. Zachary Taylor's third daughter, Anne, married Robert C. Wood, a U.S. Army surgeon who served during the Civil War. Their two sons served the Confederacy, including John Taylor Wood, who initially was an officer in the U.S. Navy but resigned at the outbreak of the Civil War to join the Confederate Marine Corps and served aboard the CSS Virginia during its engagement with the USS Monitor. He later became a Confederate Army lieutenant colonel and eventually moved to Canada after the war.

Wood was also the nephew of Charles Carroll Wood, a British Army Lieutenant of the Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire), who died of wounds in South Africa during the Second Boer War in 1899.

His children included Donald Zachary Taylor Wood, who was KIA in 1944, and three sons—John Taylor Wood II, Theodore Herschel Taylor Wood, and Herschel—who served as Constables in the RCMP. Herschel was killed on duty in 1950. Both Herschel and Stuart Taylor Wood are interred at the RCMP Depot in Regina. His son John retired from the RCMP as an Inspector in 1988.