[2] When he was 13 years old, his father died, leaving his mother with eight children to support, so he went to work in a paper-box factory to help the family.
[2][1] He attended night school at Central Technical School, then continued to work in wood fabrication while studying at night at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto with John Martin Alfsen, his mentor, Franklin Carmichael, and Fred Haines (1936-1941).
[3] Four of his drawings were selected to be hung at the 1939 New York World's Fair and that same year, he began to exhibit his work at the Royal Canadian Academy[4] (he was awarded the RCA medal in 1998).
[1] In 1941, Hagan was the resident artist at Pickering College in Newmarket and taught evenings at the Northern Vocational School, Toronto (1945-1946).
[5] In 1977, he was given a retrospective at the Grimsby Public Library and Art Gallery, Ontario, titled Hagan, the mind and the hand: 1938-1976.