Legionnaire David Sim was wounded at Passchendaele at age 17 and became a deputy minister in the Department of National Revenue in 1930 at 30, the youngest ever appointed to that rank in the federal civil service.

Sim has always been a passionate believer in common sense, which may make him a radical, and perhaps unique, in Canadian government service. He once recounted:

“One day in the ‘30s I got a letter from a teacher in a Saskatchewan country school telling me that the Mounties had gone out to this farm and shot the family horse right in front of the children and what was I going to do about it. Well, I looked up the file and the teacher was right. This is what had happened: Old Ned and a buggy were the only transportation this family had. The farmer had a still on the farm and used to deliver his moonshine with Ned and the buggy. He was caught one day and sent to jail.

“The family had no income, so the farmer’s wife got the still going again, or made a new one, and began making deliveries with Ned and the buggy. The Mounties caught her on a back road one day and the horse and buggy, along with the moonshine, were seized.

The next thing in the procedure is to sell the seized goods, that is, the horse and buggy. The horse remained on the farm for 90 days while we tried to sell it. Naturally, the neighbours weren’t going to buy the horse. Now, goods that can’t be sold are destroyed. So after 90 days didn’t the RCMP go out to the farm and shoot Old Ned, in front of the kids, just like the teacher said. Well, what was I going to do about it?

I figured out that it cost $1 a day to keep a government horse, which Ned was after we seized him. Ninety days’ keep was $90. So we sent the wife a cheque for $90. She bought a new horse for $60 and had $30 to spend foolishly.”