Early Life
Born in the village of St. Peter's near Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada, into a well-known Protestant family. Dunn's father owned a shipbuilding company whose fortunes had been all but wiped out by the sharp decline in the demand for wooden ships. His father died when James was an infant and his widowed mother raised him on her meager earnings as a telegraph clerk.
From childhood, James Dunn was a voracious reader with a near-photographic memory. After completing his schooling, he left home to find employment and for a time he worked as a deckhand for an American shipping company on Lake Michigan. After this, he made his way to the east coast where he was employed by a manufacturing company in Lynn, Massachusetts. However, before long he returned home where a job as a clerk at a law firm led him to the decision to apply to Dalhousie University Law School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The small amount of money he had been able to save was not nearly enough to cover his education costs and Dunn worked at a variety of part time jobs to pay his way through university. He graduated in 1899 then worked as a lawyer in Halifax before setting up a law practice in Edmonton, Alberta. Within a short time, Dunn was drawn to the booming economy of Montreal, Quebec where he landed a position with one of the city's prominent law firms.
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