At a campaign rally in July, now-vice president-elect JD Vance called Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, a “phony” who “grew up in Canada.”

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Harris did, indeed, live in Montreal during her teenage years. She first moved to Canada in 1976, at the age of twelve, after her mother was recruited by McGill University; Harris and her sister were subsequently enrolled in Westmount High School. In her memoir, Harris describes a feeling of longing and homesickness for California associated with this time, saying she “felt this constant yearning to be back home.”

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During his speech in Glendale, Arizona, Vance went further as to claim that his then-opponent had faked a Southern accent during a rally in Georgia, saying that “they don’t talk like that in Vancouver or Quebec or wherever she came from, doesn’t matter.”

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Though Harris mainly spent her formative years between her parents’ homes in San Francisco and Palo Alto, her time as a student in Canada had a large influence on the trajectory of her career. While attending Westmount High, she became acquainted with fellow student Wanda Kagan, with whom she would come to form a close friendship. When Kagan opened up to Harris about the abuse she was facing at home, Harris began to consider pursuing a career in the legal system. This would eventually come to fruition, leading her down a path of candidacy for the President of the United States.

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“A big part of the reason I wanted to be a prosecutor was to protect people like her,” Harris said in a video published during her Vice Presidential campaign in 2020.

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Kagan has attested to Harris’s authenticity as an American. “They were still proud Americans,” she said of American Westmount students. “They were American and kept their American identity. It’s not like you come here and then you become French Canadian or Canadian.”

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In Kamala Harris’s case, high school dynamics determined her future in an incredibly meaningful and consequential way. To gain a teacher’s perspective on this, an interview was conducted with English teacher Ms. Varone at Harbord Collegiate Institute.

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“I think high school has a big influence on students, of course,” Ms. Varone said. “It depends on how active they are, how well they did in their studies or in their subjects.”

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“I've had students come back and say ‘Boy, did you ever teach me a lot about grammar,’ let’s say. So it’s a minor part, I think, of their whole high school learning experience,” Ms. Varone continued, speaking specifically of teachers.

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On the topic of how many students determine their career in high school, “I think fifty percent,” Ms. Varone said. “A lot of them, I feel, once they graduate, they have an idea of where they’re going to go, and often within one or two years that idea’s completely switched to something else, which I think is a good thing.”

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“Public education is, I think, pretty good in the sense that you have choices of what schools you want to go to,” Ms. Varone said, on components in this that are possibly unique to the Canadian school system. “For example, if you’re interested in acting, there are schools just for that, or if you’re interested in athletics, there are schools that foster high-achieving athletes. So I think that the school system is organized in such a way that it does give students lots of opportunity.”

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“In terms of universities, or colleges, we have so many of them,” Ms. Varone continued. “I think they’re all varied and there’s so many opportunities that if a student sits down and actually looks at what opportunities are available in each of these schools, they will have a hard time deciding.” Harris herself attended Vanier College in Montreal for a year, before transferring to Washington D.C.’s Howard University.

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There is also the question of how Kamala Harris’s politics could have been affected by the Canadian political landscape. In Canada, the belief is that the state is responsible for the well-being of its residents cradle-to-grave, namely in providing a social net. These benefits include healthcare, employment insurance, and pensions for seniors. Harris may have observed a contrast in how a country should be run upon immigrating to Canada and incorporated some of these values into her own belief system.

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This can be best evidenced when she first ran as the presidential candidate for the Democratic party, campaigning on “Medicare for All.” She ultimately lost to Joe Biden, and some speculate that this platform was one of the main reasons she did not win the primary. In her 2024 presidential campaign, Harris scaled down her stance on a public healthcare system, but was still a strong supporter of expanding the current Affordable Care Act to many more Americans. Could this traditionally un-American philosophy have been significant in her eventual loss to Donald Trump?

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Harris’s navigation of academics, teenage friendship, and being an immigrant may resonate with many Harbord students. With the outcome of the recent election, however, reflecting on her years in Canada also offer some insight into the experiences that shaped her historic campaign.

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