Born on a farm in Oxford County, Ontario, he was one of thirteen children of Francis Patterson and Annie (Telfer).
[4][6] On January 1, 1906, he was married to Margaret Norris, a medical practitioner and professor of obstetrics working in India.
With John suffering from ill health, the couple left for Toronto with their son Arthur in 1910.
[7] He became a physicist for the Canadian Meteorological Service,[2] where he was responsible for organizing a pilot program for performing upper air observations using balloons.
[8] During the First World War, he worked for the British Admiralty to perform an experiment in extracting helium from natural gas.