He grew up on the family's farm until moving to Portage la Prairie to work in a grocery store.

In 1938, he married Charlotte Nice, a Salvation Army officer from Neepawa, Manitoba.

Once the writs were dropped for the 1968 election, Thompson sought and won the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada nomination in his riding.

Bud Olson had left the party a few months before joining the Liberal Party of Canada, leaving Patterson as the acting leader of the remaining three-person Social Credit caucus into the 1968 election in which all three MPs were defeated, including Patterson in Fraser Valley East.

Patterson returned to Parliament in the 1972 election representing Fraser Valley East as a Progressive Conservative, and was subsequently re-elected as a Tory until his retirement from politics in 1984.