Kamala Harris may be a Californian by birth, but she spent her teenage years in Montreal. Her former Canadian classmates remember her as a smiling, outgoing student, despite her homesickness, who had dancing as a favorite hobby.
The American vice-president and now Democratic presidential candidate discovered the Quebec metropolis and its harsh winters in 1976, at the age of 12.
She has just left her hometown of Oakland, California, with her sister Maya and her divorced mother, who has been recruited to conduct breast cancer research at the Jewish General Hospital and to teach at McGill University.
“The thought of leaving sunny California in February, in the middle of the school year, for a foreign French-speaking city covered in 12 feet of snow was distressing,” she wrote in her 2019 memoir.
The woman who became the first woman, the first African-American and the first person of Asian origin to become vice president of the United States in January 2021 speaks little about her years in Canada, and her biography on the White House website makes no mention of it.
Although she did not speak French, she attended a French-language school upon her arrival and then studied in a bilingual school with an artistic and musical vocation. She finally joined Westmount High School, an English-language public school where she graduated in 1981.
A diverse school
“She was very friendly and outgoing,” Anu Chopra Sharma, one of her classmates, told AFP. She described her as a good student who took the time to help others. “French was a difficult subject for all of us, as we didn’t speak it,” she recalled.
At the time, the social climate was tense between English-speakers and French-speakers, the majority in the province of Quebec and in search of an affirmation of identity.
A large, beige-brick building on a busy street, Kamala Harris High School is in an affluent neighborhood. But the school serves students from the surrounding area, so “a lot of the kids were working-class,” recalls Mara Rudzitis, 82, a former art teacher.
The school is also multi-ethnic. There were “people of all colours”, with students of Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Chinese origin, adds Dean Smith, one of his classmates.
“Always something to say”
Active and sociable, the American vice president, now 59 years old, was at the time a member of various clubs and took part in the school fashion show.
For the young girl, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, dancing with her troupe, the Super Six, then the Midnight Magic, is her favorite pastime, according to the end-of-school year album.
In this collection, we see the young Kamala Harris with a broad smile and an afro cut, her hair loose and curly.
“She was always smiling and loved to laugh, just like you see her today,” Smith recalled.
“She got along well with everyone,” continues the 62-year-old, who grew up in the Little Burgundy neighborhood, which has a historically black and working-class population.
Mara Rudzitis remembers her as a “very smart” teenager with lots of friends who liked to hang out in the art room during lunch break. And she’s still impressed by her eloquence: “She always had something to say,” she says, delighted to see her former student aspire to the presidency of the United States.
It was also during his stay in Canada that his professional vocation became clear.
“When I was in high school, I found out that my best friend was being molested,” Harris said. “A big reason I wanted to become a prosecutor was to protect people like her.” That friend, Wanda Kagan, spent months in her home after being abused by her stepfather.
In Canada, Kamala Harris felt “homesick” and “constantly” longing to go home, she says in her memoir. After completing her studies, she returned to her native country, where she attended Howard University in Washington, nicknamed the black Harvard, from 1982.
