Telford was born June 19, 1860, in Shawville, Quebec, to Irish parents, Robert and Anne Telford. He was educated at public schools in Quebec. In 1880 he went to the United States, before returning to Canada in 1885 in search of adventure after reading an article about the North-West Rebellion. He arrived in Calgary and worked as a carpenter until July 1886, when he joined the North-West Mounted Police. In 1889 he homesteaded near what is now Leduc, on the shores of what was then called Leduc Lake. That July he built a house, which was then the largest building between Calgary and Edmonton; he operated it as a "stopping house", or hotel. In the spring of 1890 he married Wisconsin native Belle Howard. They married in Wisconsin, but returned to Leduc shortly afterwards. Robert and Belle Telford adopted to sons, Raymond and Lome; Raymond was killed in June 1916, while serving with the 51st Battalion in World War I. Besides his stopping house, which he moved closer to the railway station when the railway arrived in Leduc, Robert Telford operated a general store and later a lumberyard; he ran the latter for twenty-five years before selling it in 1919. He served as postmaster from 1894 until 1905, and became Leduc's justice of the peace in January of 1897. He was also active with the Masons.
Political career
Telford ran as the Liberal candidate in Leduc in the 1905 provincial election, the first in Alberta's history. He handily defeated his Conservative opponent. He was returned to office without opposition in the 1909 election, and was defeated during the nomination process by Stanley Tobin in his bid for re-election in 1913. In the legislature, he supported the government of PremierAlexander Cameron Rutherford against a group of dissident Liberals in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal. The Calgary Herald alleged that he had accepted a bribe of C$500 to do so, prompting Telford to sue for libel. When Rutherford's government fell and was replaced by that of Arthur Sifton which, though Liberal, followed the opposite course to Rutherford's on the railway issues that had brought down Rutherford's government, Telford supported the new government, notwithstanding its policy differences with the old. Telford was also involved in local politics: he served on the Leduc town council for several years and as mayor from 1915 to 1916. As at 1924, he also served on the school board.
Later life and legacy
After selling his lumberyard in 1919, Telford entered a state of near-retirement, though he continued to derive significant income from real estate holdings in the Leduc area. He died in 1933 at the age of 73. Leduc Lake was renamed Telford Lake in his honour, and the hamlet of Telfordville also bears his name.
