Boer War and Legal Career
Griesbach enlisted with the Canadian Mounted Rifles in 1899 to fight in the Second Boer War. He knew from being weighed in at boxing tournaments that he fell short of the minimum one hundred and forty pound weight to enlist, so on his way to being weighed he surreptitiously grabbed a large piece of coal from the enlistment centre's coal box and held it behind his back while he stood on the scales. During his service, he was awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal and received four bars.
Upon his return in 1901, he opened a law office of his own. An Edmonton Bulletin article in 1927 quoted him as saying of these early years
| “ | My rent was $12 a month. The first month I didn't make anything; the second I made exactly $12, and the third I went up to $17. Most of my callers in those days were people who wanted to sell me books. | ” |
Read more about this topic: William Antrobus Griesbach
Famous quotes containing the words war, legal and/or career:
“The dead have been awakened—shall I sleep?
The world’s at war with tyrants—shall I crouch?
The harvest’s ripe—and shall I pause to reap?
I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;
Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,
Its echo in my heart.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)