The 91st Regiment Canadian Highlanders Memorial was constructed in 1921 by Architect Stanley Thomas John Fryer (1885-1956). Stanley was born in Sawston, England on 4 May 1885 and educated at the Technical College in Bradford, England and at the Bradford City Art School. He articled with Edgar H. Parkinson in England from 1900 to 1905 and emigrated to the United States in 1907 where he worked in the offices of some of Boston's leading architects, including Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, Allen & Collins, and with Coolidge & Carlson. He moved to New York and worked for Thomas Lamb before coming to Canada in 1911 and settling in Hamilton where he was employed as a draftsman by Munro & Mead in 1911-12. He worked in partnership with W. Grayson Brown in 1913-14 then became partners with William G. Evans in 1915.
The following year he went overseas with Canadian Forces and was severely wounded at Somme, France. Stanley served with the 13th and 26th Batteries, Canadian Field Artillery. He returned to Canada in 1917 and resumed practice in the partnership of Fryer & Evans from 1920 to 1926.
Stanley provided illustrations for Gun-Fire An Historical Narrative of The 4th Brigade Canadian Field Artillery in the First World War. He served as President of the Ontario Association of Architects in 1923-24 and then moved to Windsor in late 1925 to assist C. Howard Crane and Albert Kahn in Detroit before returning to Toronto in 1930 to work as draftsman for John A. Pearson. In 1931 he was noted as the designer working in the office of the City Architect of Toronto. He left Canada in 1936 and returned to England to work for the Ministry of Works until 1948 when he came back to Hamilton and joined his former partner who was by then practicing under the name of Murton & Evans. Fryer died in Hamilton on 27 January 1956.
