In 1915, when he was 17, he enrolled at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. "I didn't know what I wanted to be, if a pirate sailing the oceans doesn't count," he said. "But the next year, at 18, 1 left the university and joined the 65th Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery. I was full of adventure and was ready to face the trenches in France, but fate intervened. In training, I became trapped between two rolling gun carriages and spent the next 16 months in a Toronto military hospital."