He was educated in Ottawa and at Queen's University and Osgoode Hall Law School before being admitted to the bar in 1926.
[2] He began advising Mackenzie King during election campaigns in the 1920s and was named as executor of the late prime minister's estate.
He was killed in an automobile collision on the Queen Elizabeth Way when returning home from the opening of the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.
[3] He was a senior partner in the Ottawa firm of Gowling, MacTavish, Osborne and Henderson and was an officer of 34 corporations as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of Queen's University.
[2] During World War II he served as deputy Judge Advocate General of the Royal Canadian Navy with the rank of captain.