Adrienne Clarkson - Education and First Marriage

Education and First Marriage

Clarkson graduated from Lisgar Collegiate Institute in 1956, afterwards enrolling at the University of Toronto's Trinity College. During her time there, Clarkson won a Governor General's Medal in English before graduating in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in the subject, and then travelling with her parents to East and Southeast Asia. Clarkson went on to obtain her master's degree in English literature, also at the University of Toronto.

She began post-graduate work in 1962, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, with a thesis on the poems of George Meredith, and the following year, married Stephen Clarkson, a University of Toronto political science professor. Together, the couple had three daughters: Kyra, born in 1969, and twins Blaise and Chloe, born in 1971; at the age of nine months, however, Chloe died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Adrienne and Stephen divorced four years later, with Stephen being awarded full custody of the two surviving children, and, subsequently, Stephen's second wife, Christina McCall, adopted the two girls, who eventually became estranged from their mother for several decades.