Early Life and Education
John Gilbert "Jack" Layton was born in Montreal and raised in nearby Hudson, Quebec, a comfortable and largely Anglophone community. His parents were Doris Elizabeth (Steeves), a grand-niece of William Steeves, a Father of Confederation, and Progressive Conservative MP Robert Layton. He was elected student council president of his high school, Hudson High School, and his yearbook predicted that he would become a politician; he would later also credit classmate Billy Bryans, who went on to become a prominent musician with the band The Parachute Club, for having played a role in his student council victory. He graduated from McGill University in 1970 with an Honours BA in political science and became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.
In 1969–70, he was the Prime Minister of the Quebec Youth Parliament.
Layton credits a professor at McGill, the political philosopher Charles Taylor, with being the primary influence in his decision to switch from a science degree to an arts degree. Moreover, it was on Taylor's advice that he pursued his doctorate in Toronto to study the work of University of Toronto political philosopher C.B. Macpherson. In what is perhaps his most complete articulation of his political philosophy, a foreword he wrote for Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom, he explains that, "The idealist current holds that human society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to form a society in which equality means more than negative liberty, the absolute and protected right to run races against each other to determine winners. Idealists imagine a positive liberty that enables us to build together toward common objectives that fulfill and even surpass our individual goals." Upon reading Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom, Layton came to understand himself as part of the intellectual tradition of Canadian Idealists.
In 1970, the family moved to Toronto where Layton graduated the following year from York University with an MA in political science. In 1983, he completed his PhD in political science at York. In 1974, Layton became a professor at Ryerson University. Over the next decade, he taught at Ryerson, York, and the University of Toronto. He also became a prominent activist for a variety of causes. He wrote several books, including Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis and a book on general public policy, Speaking Out.
Read more about this topic: Jack Layton
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“This death’s livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life was sign that they have sold their wills and bodies to the State: and contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for that its beginning was voluntary.”
—T.E. (Thomas Edward)
“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)