When my family moved to Canada on November 1, 1959, I was just a few months shy of being 6 years old. I'm not 100% sure why we moved to Canada but I've heard it said that my father had come to Toronto to attend the wedding of his nephew (my cousin) Sydney. Dad apparently liked Toronto so much, that when he returned to Glasgow, he informed my mother and the rest of us that we were moving across the ocean. So, we went. Even then, dad’s need to control was evident… and it was only a matter of time before it became even stronger. I do remember that I had a friend named Angus. I have a photo of him taken by the fence around our house in Glasgow. I don't really remember anything about him, but mom keeps telling me that we were best friends and inseparable.

In Ontario, when you're 6 years old, you start school – mostly in kindergarten. However, it seems that I had been in school in Glasgow since I was 4½. My mom tells the story that, after a few weeks of school, she got a call from the teacher who indicated that I was just sitting in the class doing nothing, not participating, not talking to the other students, and totally disinterested in what was happening. The teacher was aghast when mom told her that I could already read and write, and perhaps I was simply bored. This is true as it turns out, and the following week I was placed in the first grade. I wasn't even 6 years old yet. While I was quite pleased with myself for “being so smart", I was younger than all the other students in the class, and stayed that way right through high school. When I finished grade 13, in June of 1971, I was just 17, although I did have to complete one more semester before getting my diploma as a result of switching schools mid-year. I didn't even have my driver's license yet because my dad thought I should wait until school was out! It was difficult trying to get a date in high school. Not only was I younger than all the girls in my class, I didn't have a license like the other boys. Not an easy thing at that age. I also remember being shorter than everyone else in the class and, to top things off, I started to lose my hair when I was only 16 years old. I always blamed my mom for these more permanent bad things in my life. My going bald and my migraines were both hereditary from mom’s side of the family.

In 1974, Mary – my “amour de jour" – introduced me to the writings of Ayn Rand. Mary knew of my interest in drafting and architecture and pushed me to read Rand's "The Fountainhead". After reading the novel, I found myself thinking that I was completely superior to everyone else around me. I had discovered, through my reading, the only sane manner in which to live; the only rational way to conduct business; the only proper way in which people should interact with each other. I can't believe how arrogant I was… how naïve I was. For, as I discovered much later, that rationality, and that sane and proper way was only possible in an ideal world.

I always prided myself on my memory, on my ability to recall the most trivial facts about completely non-significant things. I thought so highly of my own memory, that I don't ever recall spending a lot of time studying my school work for upcoming tests or exams. I felt, when the time came to write down the answers, that I would mysteriously remember whatever it was I needed to know - instantly. My memory let me down a number of times, and it's taken a long time to realize that perhaps it was my initial assumption that was incorrect. It astounds me sometimes, to think that I was (and am) so completely arrogant about my own abilities. Years later, this would be called my “Ontario attitude".