Frederick Bourchier Taylor was born in Ottawa on July 27, 1906 to parents Florence Magee and Plunkett Bourchier Taylor. He was preceded by an older brother E.P.Taylor, who became one of Canada's leading industrialists. Taylor's maternal grandfather, Charles Magee, founded the Bank of Ottawa while Taylor's paternal grandparents, the Bourchiers, upheld a tradition of military careers. The Taylors resided in both England and Canada while Fred Taylor was a young boy. He moved to Montreal in the late 1910s. During his years at McGill, he was highly involved in university life; he was the winner of boxing titles as well as a founding member of the Red Birds Ski Club. Taylor graduated as an architect from the McGill School of Architecture in 1930. While Taylor displayed great talent and potential as an architect, (he was awarded both a scholarship to the Sorbonne as well as the Governor General's award for highest academic standing, he also produced highly-accomplished drawings, sketches and prints while at school and after), Taylor ventured into fine arts and soon found this to be his calling.

Taylor went to London where he studied painting and engraving at the Goldsmith College of Art, London Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Byam Shaw School of painting. Taylor returned to Montreal in the mid 1930s whereupon he took up a post at McGill, teaching Drawing and Modeling from 1940 to 1943. He married his cousin, Miriam Magee, in 1936. Fred and Miriam had two sons, Jeremy, a photographer and Paul, parliamentary correspondent and member of parliament.

Taylor also began experimenting with oils at this time. He took up portraiture and his repertoire includes, among others, portraits of Stephen Leacock and R.E. Powell. Taylor soon became captivated by the Canadian war effort in the 1940s and became engaged with portraying industrialism and the war effort in Canada in accomplished works such as High Rivet, Talking Union and his steel works series. Taylor quickly moved into landscape painting and produced a great body of work in this vein from a great range of locales, from Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, to Quebec rooftops and Montreal's streets, to the community of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

It was during the late 1930s that Taylor really began to pursue his career as an artist. He began with drypoints, aquatints as well as engravings. These early works, including many public buildings and urban scenes in Ottawa and Quebec primarily, demonstrate Taylor's highly-attuned comprehension of the medium and his mastered hand in the art of printmaking as well as highlighting his meticulous attention to detail and the sophistication of the finished work.