 In interviews in later years, Dickins said he was not sure how he acquired the nickname, but admitted he had it longer than he could remember.Punch went to Peace Avenue school, a temporary school.In 1914 when he was 16, he enrolled in mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta, but when war broke out he quit to enlist as an infantryman in the Canadian Army, and served with the 196th Western Universities Battalion for one year as a company clerk.