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moved to South Africa, where Jamie’s grandfather was born. He later emigrated
to Canada and settled in Revelstoke, where he ran a hardware store
and became president of the Revelstoke Chamber of Commerce and an
alderman. Lawrence Hardware frequently grubstaked local prospectors and
miners, but when World War I broke out, many of them were relieved of
their financial obligations by a statutory moratorium designed as an incentive
to enlist. As a result, the store went bankrupt.
Jamie attended Prince of Wales High School. Brighter than most of his
contemporaries, he had skipped two grades by the time he graduated. Too
young to enroll at UBC, he spent a year at Royal Roads. Then he attended
UBC law school, articled to his father and was called to the B.C. bar in October
1954. He practised with Lawrence & Shaw until he retired in 1988.
Not long after his call, he took a sabbatical, journeyed to London, England
and worked for a firm of solicitors. While there, he joined the Honourable
Artillery Company, the oldest regiment in the British Army.
Despite its name, it is an infantry regiment, the equivalent of a Canadian
militia regiment. Jamie had already been commissioned a lieutenant in the
Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. He eventually reached the rank of major
in the Seaforths.
While in London, he bought a motorized bicycle, believing it to be the
easiest way to get around the city, and even rode it to Italy and back. When
he did return to London, he needed to rid himself of the bike before setting
off for home. Jamie was nothing if not decisive. Not wanting to get involved
in the problems of selling it, he simply parked it by St. Paul’s Cathedral and
left the keys in the ignition.
Most readers will likely have heard of Holdsworth’s A History of English
Law. Some may even have hefted a volume or two. How many, though, like
Jamie, had a set of all its 17 volumes in their home libraries? Jamie had
many other books of interest to lawyers and once put some of these in the
firm’s library for others to borrow. He discontinued the practice when they
began to disappear.
One of the partners, having spent several hours researching some
obscure issue of trust law, went to Jamie to discuss it and was startled to find
that Jamie was aware of the issue and its solution, and in discussion even
tossed off the names of some of the relevant cases.
When handling an estate in which the will provided a cash bequest of a
stated amount per cat for the caregivers who took over one or more of the
testator’s many cats, he was disappointed to learn that none of the cats was
“with child”.
On February 20, 1960, he married Sally West, the secretary of his friend,
David Purvis. They had two children, Gillian and Andrew.