Hugh Taylor Lemon was born on September 27, 1927 in Hamilton, Ontario, to Hugh Lemon originally of Bognor, Ontario (near Owen Sound) and Helen Taylor originally of North Berwick, Scotland. He was an Air Cadet training for the Royal Canadian Air Force, flying Harvard trainer airplanes out of Mount Hope when WWII ended. Hugh went to Albert College in Belleville, Ontario. He was trained in land surveying and city planning and went to work for the Hamilton Wentworth Planning Board. He married Doris Ann Hood of Waterdown in 1950. 
Hugh went to work for the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Trade in 1955 and remained there until 1970, when he went to the University of Waterloo as a Professional Liaison Officer in the School of Urban and Regional Planning. While at the Board of Trade, he represented significant business interests in the big land use and development decisions of the time, including the skyscraper bank office towers downtown and their underground shopping concourses, Lake Ontario waterfront plans, the international competition for the "new" city hall in Toronto, and he served on the international airport committee that helped map out taking the Malton airport from what it was then to the world class Pearson International Airport and economic engine for Toronto. One of the projects he considered the most fun of his career was building the Board of Trade Golf and Country Club in Woodbridge.
At the same time, for more than 15 years, Hugh was the Secretary Treasurer of the Town Planning Institute of Canada, which became the Canadian Institute of Planners. He was awarded the National Centennial Medal in 1967 for his outstanding contribution to City Planning in Canada and was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners (FCIP) in 1977.
Hugh knew everyone in Canadian city planning circles from coast to coast. At the University of Waterloo, he became the primary link between the planning school and the profession of city planning and planning employers, helping hundreds of planning students land their first jobs with summer internship placements and then full-time jobs. He was an advocate for good farming practices such as contour plowing and fencing creeks to reduce soil erosion and improve water quality in tributary watersheds.
Hugh was a supporter of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, the Long Point Bird Observatory and more recently the Nature Conservancy of Canada in their conservation and land acquisition efforts on the Bruce Peninsula to purchase and protect rare and special habitats and properties.