He enlisted in the Cycle Corps at the beginning of World War I, and served overseas in France, seeing action at Ypres, Vimy Ridge, and Passchendaele.
MacAlpine and his exploration party of cartographers, geographers from McGill University set off to the chart the North, and after the undercarriage collapsed in their aircraft, they were lost in the far northern reaches of the Arctic, near Baker Lake see The Montreal Gazette November–December articles entitled "Lost in the Barrens!".
After the war, he was one of four who founded Western Canada Airways in Manitoba, and was superintendent and chief pilot of the company's airmail operations from 1930 to 1932.
Brown had a legacy association with A.V.Roe, having flown numerous single engine planes designed by Roe during his extensive years of bush flying.
Brown's piloting skills were undoubtedly useful to his political career, as he represented the northern constituency of Rupertsland in the Manitoba assembly.
The Progressive Conservatives under Dufferin Roblin had already won a minority government in the rest of the province, and there was little incentive for voters in this remote area to elect an opposition member.