But once more they would soon be on their way. In 1893 the family sailed to Canada where they settled in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island across the sound from Vancouver, his father working as a miner. James was twelve when the arrived but was clearly bitten, most likely the part Scots, part Scouse variant, by the contagion of football. At sixteen, actually seventeen he was playing up front for the Nanaimo Thistles, whilst starting work as a Clerk in a grocery store, a business he was to remain with for the rest of his life. At twenty-two he would open his own store in Ladysmith just down the coast. This was as on the field he now captained its team from 1904 to 1910 and in 1909 being a member of the British Columbian that toured to San Francisco, whilst off field becoming in 1907 one of the first President of the British Columbian Football Association, repeating the role in 1921-22. Moreover, in 1913 he opened another store in the island's capital, Victoria, followed by a second, settled there and then became heavily involved in its football scene. 

And meantime in 1905 he had married. His wife was Gertrude MacKinnon, originally christened Bridget and from Cape Breton but also staying in Nanaimo. They settled first probably in Chemainus until the move to city, raising four children. This was whilst Jimmie, once his playing days were over in Victoria and elsewhere, became the British Columbian delegate to the Dominion Football Association, Canada's FA, a position he would hold for fifteen years and was also able to find the time to manage the Canadian national team's first two trips abroad, five years before Scotland would do the same, to both Australia and New Zealand in 1924, three months away, and to New Zealand only in 1927, a ten week trip. It was an accumulated dedication to football at all levels that in 2008 would see him rightly made a member of Canada's Soccer Hall of Fame and might warrant a little money spent on the restoration a pioneer's grave.