Hugh Bremner came first in his class at No 1 Air Observer School at Malton and was awarded the 'Skyways Trophy': a sterling silver cigarette case. It seems that similar cigarette case awards were presented to the top student in every class at Air Observer Training Schools in Canada.
From the dents, it seems it was well used. He was a smoker
As first in class he was allowed to choose the Command he wished to join and his choice was Transport Command.

Air Observers were what we could call "Navigators" today. For recruits in this stream, the training path after the Initial Training School (ITS) was eight weeks at an Air Observer School (AOS), one month at a Bombing & Gunnery School (B&GS), and finally one month at a Navigation School. The Air Observer schools were operated by civilians under contract to the RCAF, however the instructors were RCAF. The basic navigation techniques throughout the war years were dead reckoning and visual pilotage, and the tools were the aeronautical chart, magnetic compass, watch, trip log, pencil, Douglas protractor, and Dalton Navigational Computer. Recruits also studied Aerial photography. They trained in the Avro Anson at one of ten schools scattered across Canada.

Source: https://www.emedals.com/catalog/product/print/id/32562/