Travis graduated from Harvard University in 1866, and was awarded the law school's foremost prize for dissertations.
Travis was appalled by the open traffic of liquor, gambling and prostitution in Calgary despite legal prohibition in the Northwest Territories.
This culminated in the arrest and imprisonment of councillor Simon John Clarke to six month of hard labour, dismissal and imprisonment of Clerk of District Court Hugh Cayley, overturning the results of the January 1886 Calgary municipal election, removing Mayor Murdoch, barring him from contesting an election for two years and the appointment of a separate municipal council.
Travis was subsequently placed on paid leave while Justice Thomas Wardlaw Taylor was appointed by the federal government to investigate the situation.
Justice Taylor's final report concluded "...considering the excited state of public feeling, and the attitude of hostility in which Mr. Travis and a large number of inhabitants of Calgary and neighbourhood stand to one another, and for which both parties are blameable, I can express no other opinion, than that the Government ought not to continue Mr. Travis in the office of Stipendiary Magistrate at the Town of Calgary.