So while other young Canadians were picking up their guns and fighting in Europe, Patton picked up his tenor saxophone and helped those who were here fight their worries.
Patton died Oct. 20 in a Richmond Hill hospital at the age of 91. But even in his last days, he was boosting the morale of his daughter, Holly Briesmaster, 58, and son, Brooke Patton, 57, with flamboyant tales of his time as a big band leader.
"Dad was definitely a star. And if you wanted to be affirmed of that, all you had to do was ask him because he would certainly tell you," his son said.
A clarinet and tenor sax player, he was one of a group of Canadian big band-era musicians whose bands grew in popularity in spite of, or perhaps due to, the Depression and, later, the war.
He played Toronto's Royal York Hotel and Casa Loma, the Lakeview Casino in Grand Bend and the Brant Inn in Burlington.
Patton also performed on CBC Radio's Sweet and Low, and wrote music and comedy for other CBC programs, such as Happy Gang and Newsical.
With his death, few musicians remain from that swing era.
"We're all dying," said Murray Ginsberg, 84, a retired trombonist, and former member of the Royal Canadian Army Show and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. "I knew Stan for years. He always had a good band.
"
Patton was born to Irish parents in 1915 in St. Boniface, Man., the youngest of nine children.
He grew up in Vancouver, where he became the leader of a band in 1935.
"The nickname my dad had was `Jazz,'" his daughter said. "His orchestra called him that.
It gives you a sense of the sparkling quality about Stan Patton."
In his unpublished memoirs, typed out in 1997, he recalls chatting on a wet morning in 1940 with his friend, Mart Kenney, who was known as Canada's Big Band King.
Patton wrote, "Mart, if it rains one more damn day (in Vancouver), I'm gonna pack my sax, clarinet and tux, then I'm leaving this town forever.
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Kenney asked Patton to join his legendary band, Mart Kenney and his Western Gentlemen, as they relocated to Toronto. Patton went home and said, "Mom, I'm going to Toronto with Mart Kenney."
With Kenney, Patton went on a national tour.
But the late nights caught up with him in the Winnipeg Arena.
"While the muted brass were playing the first chorus of `Stardust,' I fell asleep, and when the sax section stood up to play the second chorus, (I) sat slumped down on (my) chair in dreamland," Patton wrote.
He didn't rest long.
By 1941, he had started his own orchestra in Toronto. Two years later, Patton married Patricia Jean Duncan. He remarried in 1975 following Patricia's death in 1973.
When the age of the big band faded, Patton got into real estate and made more money in his first week than he had earned in a month with the band.
"He really had a magnetic personality and he transferred his on-stage persona into being a good salesman," his son said.
But Patton had one last summer as "Jazz" when, in 1962, he auditioned and was booked into the Imperial Room at the Royal York Hotel.
"Nobody was ever with my dad that they didn't laugh. Ever," Brooke said. "Sometimes you were laughing at the same band stories and jokes you had heard a hundred times.
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In addition to his children, Patton leaves a granddaughter. His family plans to mark his life on Jan. 29, 2007, on what would have been his 92nd birthday.
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