(Also commemorated on Jesse Ketchum's Roll of Honour.)

Ronald Walker was born on December 23, 1923 in Atholl, New Brunswick, now a part of Campbellton on the Quebec border. His father, James Cameron Walker, born ca. 1893, was from Stewiacke, Nova Scotia and had served in the First World War. He fought in France from January 1916, but suffered some health setbacks and was returned to England in October, 1917. He continued to serve in England and met Louisa Marion Mansfield (b. ca. 1891), an Englishwoman who came from Godalming, a few miles from the Whitley army camp where James was based. She was the daughter of a plumber. They married in the summer of 1918 in Guildford, England, several kilometres north of Godalming.

James shipped back to Canada in December 1918 and he made arrangements to have Louisa join him. They settled in Atholl and James resumed his career as a lumber surveyor. They welcomed a son, Bruce Mansfield, in 1920, followed by daughter Lorna the next year. The Walkers and their three children moved to Toronto in the mid-1920s. They lived in a flat on Davenport Road and the children attended Jesse Ketchum school. Ronald began his school career there until 1931, when the family moved to 8 St. Alban's Street, which is today's Wellesley Street, west of Yonge. It was a very short walk to the schoolyard. James was working for a lumber company and another son had been born in November 1930, Edward Learman, likely necessitating the move to a larger apartment.

Ronald probably joined the Grade 3 class at Wellesley and attended the school until 1936, when he began high school in Northern Vocational's (today's Northern Secondary) Commercial program. He was an active boy, enjoying tennis, basketball, baseball and hockey. He played the latter on Northern's team. In 1937 he fractured his right right arm and back in 1930 he had broken his right ankle. Ronald was a member of St. Paul's Anglican Church.

He left Northern with his junior matriculation in 1939 and got work as a bench worker at George H. Hees & Co., a curtain and upholstery company located on Davenport Road near Avenue Road. He left there in 1941 to be a paper cutter at Canada Glazed Papers on McMurrich Street near Yonge and Davenport. The family had moved around the Yonge and Bloor neighbourhood and in 1941 the Walkers were living at 8 McMurrich. Older brother Bruce had joined the 48th Highlanders and was serving in the war.

Later in 1941, Ronald became a trucker for the Canadian National Railway and by 1943 was an invoice clerk for Metropolitan Transport, a trucking company. He was in the army reserve as a gunner in the 30th Battery of the Royal Canadian Artillery and enlisted in the RCAF on January 11, 1943. He stated that after the war he hoped to become a journalist. He and his parents were living above a store at 674 Yonge Street near Isabella at the time.

Unlike most RCAF recruits, who wanted to be pilots, Ronald entered as an air frame mechanic. On February 9, he reported to the RCAF wireless school in Guelph, possibly to take a wireless maintenance course. He returned to Toronto on June 11, to take his basic training at the Exhibition Grounds. At the end of July, he was sent to attend technical training school in St. Thomas, Ontario. It was located in the converted Ontario Psychiatric Hospital complex and could train over 2000 students at a time. The courses were usually six months long and offered programs for aircraft mechanics, electricians and fabric and sheet metal workers.