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.
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