Dan Bilefsky is a Canadian correspondent for the New York Times. He grew up in Westmount, where Ms. Harris and her mother and sister moved after her mother divorced her father. Her mother did cancer research at McGill. Bilesky has been talking to people who knew Kamela then:
Her childhood friends recalled a confident young woman who showed seeds of activism, found cultural affirmation in her Black identity and complained about French class.
Mara Rudzitis, an art teacher at Westmount High for 22 years, recalled Kamala sometimes spent her lunch hour making art in the arts and crafts studio, where students would come to paint and make ceramic masks.
“We didn’t get the cream of the crop at Westmount High — many of those kids would go to private schools — we got more of the sour cream,” she told me. “Kids are very impressionable at that age and Kamala was exposed to people from all walks of life and nationalities.”
Ms. Kagan told me that while Ms. Harris was a diligent student, her limited exposure to French before coming to Canada disadvantaged her at a high school where the students in the French immersion section received more attention and resources. Ms. Harris arrived in Montreal knowing a handful of French words learned from ballet classes and was placed in the English section, Ms. Kagan said.
Montreal was a multicultural city long before Canada adopted multiculturalism as a policy. Hers was a much different environment than the one Donald Trump -- and many Americans -- have grown up in. Certainly, it's the polar opposite of the world Donald Trump knows.
Harris's education has been broad and deep. Trump hasn't learned anything since he was ten years old. He was, William T. Kelley -- one of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania -- said, "the dumbest goddamn student I ever had."
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Image: The New York Times
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