The Education of a US Vice-President
Kamala Harris is Canadian?? No. But she attended seven years of school and college in Canada!
American Vice President Kamala Harris used to live in Canada.
For a long time.
Her formative years.
From 1975 to 1982, from the age of 11 to the age of 18, Kamala Harris, an American, was a student in Canada.
This would be about 8.4 cent of her life.
Why did Kamala Harris attend school in Canada?
Kamala’s mother, Shyamala Harris, a noted scientist, was a medical researcher specializing in breast cancer. At the time of her move to Canada, taking her two children with her, she was by then divorced from Kamala’s university professor father, Don Harris. It’s noted that when Kamala visited her father white children there refused to play with her because she was black.
Shymala Harris was living with her two daughters in Berkley, California, and her father was living in Palo Alto. Berkley was a very familiar place to her mother, who earned her Masters there and also her PhD, in endocrinology.
Then Shyamala Harris was offered a job in Canada, at McGill University’s Jewish General Hospital (JGH) in Montreal, Quebec.
McGill is one of Canada’s oldest universities, established in 1821.
Shyamala Harris took up the position at McGill.
Here she could do serious research. Four hospitals are associated with McGill University, St. Mary’s Hospital Centre, McGill University Health Centre, the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, and the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, or JGH, as it is commonly known.
That is why Kamala Harris, living with her brilliant mother working in medical research in Canada, spent several years in Montreal, from the age of 11 to 18.
All Harris’ high school years were in Canada.
Kamala Harris attended Montreal’s Westmount High School from 1978 to 1981.
Westmount High School has turned out some famous alumni.
Aside from Canadian businessmen and politicians you may not recognize a number of Westmount alumni became internationally known in the arts.
Decades before Harris attended, poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen graduated from Westmount. Very early Cohen was noted for his interest in music and poetry. He showed interest in politics. He became student council president. After graduating, Cohen attended McGill University.
Mila Mulroney, the wife of Canada’s 18th Prime Minister graduated from Westmount.
Another Westmount alumni most people won’t recognize.
Norma Shearer was one of Hollywood’s original Hollywood movie stars, her career spanning the silent movie era and well into the sound era, winning her Best Actress Oscar in 1930.
In Westmount High School’s 1981 yearbook, Kamala Harris described her favourite pastime as “dancing with Midnight Magic,” a dance troupe she founded with her friend Wanda Kagan, who remembers the two of them performing at community centres and fundraisers.
After graduating from Westmount High Harris attended Montreal’s Vanier College for one year then she returned to the United States to attend Howard University, in Washington, D.C, established at the end of the American Civil War to train black clergymen.
Howard University, throughout its history, has been traditionally a university serving black students, so it is interesting Harris made that university her choice to further her education on leaving Canada.
Kamala Harris graduated from Howard Univeristy in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.
Then Harris returned to California to study law.
She graduated from the University of California’s College of the Law and didn’t stop until she attained her Doctorate in 1989.
Doctor Kamala Harris is a Doctor of Law, the highest education one can attain in the study of law.
Thanks for reading!
