 He worked as an office boy in the brokerage firm of Pellatt & Osler of Toronto, earning $300 a year.At the same time, he took a job cleaning a grocery store for $200 a year, sleeping under the counter to act as a night watchman.This income helped his mother with her debts and when still a teenager he paid for his brother (the future Brigadier-General Herbert Colborne Nanton R.E., who married a daughter of Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière) to attend the Royal Military College of Canada.