[4][10] Contrary to Fegan's policy of placing young boys on farms to serve as labourers,[11] Maxted boarded as a teenager with the family of Dr. Malcolm Sparrow, a prominent dentist and amateur tenor residing in the Parkdale district of Toronto.
[12] Living with the Sparrows afforded Maxted the opportunity to attend Toronto's Parkdale Collegiate Institute, where he won two scholarships and excelled in sports.
[14][15] Following high school, Maxted began forestry studies at the University of Toronto, but war was mounting in Europe and he only completed one term before dropping out to enlist.
[16] Maxted was assigned to Eaton's Machine Gun Battery upon his enlistment, and was promoted to the rank of corporal before departing for England with his battalion in June 1915.
[16] Finding employment in post-war Canada was a challenge, so later in 1919 Maxted headed south to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States, where he found work as an oven builder for the booming steel town coke industry.
[5][22][23] However, he found the work exacerbated his lingering respiratory problems caused by gas exposure,[5] so he returned to Canada where he engaged in sales for the lumber industry.
[31] Augustus Bridle, the arts critic for the Toronto Daily Star, who himself had been a British Home Child, wrote of Maxted: "He has a delightful voice, as ductile as spun glass in the making.
[32][33] In 1930, Maxted signed a contract with the Columbia Broadcasting System in New York City, singing live on five different radio programs weekly.
[35] In 1933, Maxted's health forced him to return to Toronto, where he took a position as a regional program director with the Canadian Radio Commission (the immediate precursor of the CBC).
[23][36] In an article published in the Ottawa Citizen in November 1933, Maxted gave advice to other radio singers: "Sing the good things whenever you can.
"[23] After joining the Canadian Radio Commission, Maxted continued to perform at concerts across North America, and even began composing his own songs as well.
[37][39] Upon his return to London, he began to produce a variety of radio entertainment programs in a West End theatre with a live audience, a practice that was more commonly found in North American studios.
[37][5] By 1942, Maxted's five-minute talks regarding blackout precautions and air raid survival tips during the London Blitz had become so popular with American audiences that the BBC initiated a weekly shortwave broadcast.
On 16 September 1944, Maxted was summoned to a briefing regarding Operation Market Garden, an attempt by the Western Allies to gain a foothold in German-held territory in the Netherlands.
[41] Maxted was told that he and other members of the press, including Alan Wood of the Daily Express, would be accompanying British troops of the 1st Airborne Division (the 'Red Devils') as part of an invasion on the far side of the Rhine River.
[41] The planned reinforcements never arrived by land, and Allied supply planes inadvertently dropped ammunition and food rations right into German hands.
[41] Maxted recounted crawling with the men through mud and rain to reach the Rhine River where Allied boats under machine gun fire carried them to safety on the other side.
[47] Following the war, it was reported that a card bearing Stanley Maxted's name was found in the records of the Gestapo offices in Berlin, along with a list of the broadcasts he had made for the BBC.
[49] After his film debut in Theirs is the Glory, Sir Laurence Olivier asked Maxted to join the cast of Born Yesterday on stage at the Garrick Theatre in London in 1947.