After attending primary and secondary school in Calgary, he set his career sights on becoming a professor of English. Advised that his religion would restrict his employment opportunities, he pursued a legal education instead. He studied in Japan on a Rotary scholarship from 1940 to 1941 and earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1940 and Bachelor of Laws in 1941 at the University of Alberta. He received his Master of Laws in 1942 from the University of Toronto. He was the first candidate to be accepted into the new doctoral program in law at the University of Toronto in 1942, entitling him to the Rowell Scholarship. World War II intervened, however, and he served with the Royal Canadian Air Force as an air gunner from 1943 to 1945. He completed his doctorate in jurisprudence in 1945 under the supervision of Bora Laskin, submitting the doctoral thesis A Study in Canadian Administrative Law: The Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Acts. He was admitted to the bars of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories.
