Inside ‘disco dancer’ Kamala Harris’s high school years in Canada – and why she keeps tight-lipped about them

She loved disco dancing to Michael Jackson and even started an all-girls dance group. She was loved, known for her laugh and bubbly personality.

But as Kamala Harris ramps up her presidential campaign, voters are unlikely to hear much from her about how she spent her formative years in Canada, a DailyMail.com survey has found.

Harris was devastated when her divorced mother told her they were moving from California to Montreal. She continued to feel homesick during their five-year stay in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

There is no mention of Harris’ Canadian education in her official White House biography website and in her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, she wrote just eight paragraphs about this period in her life.

Harris and his younger sister Maya, now 57, moved from Berkeley to Montreal in 1977, five years after their parents divorced. Her mother, Shyamala, took a job as a lecturer and researcher at the Jewish General Hospital, affiliated with McGill University.

“It was an exciting step in her career,” Harris wrote in her book. “It was not, however, an exciting opportunity for me.”

She said: ‘The thought of moving from sunny California to a French-speaking foreign city covered in 12 feet of snow in February, in the middle of the school year, was stressful to say the least.

‘My mother tried to make it sound like an adventure, taking us out to buy our first down jackets and mittens, as if we were going to be explorers of the great northern winter. But I found it hard to see it that way.’

Harris, who attended four schools in Canada’s second-largest city between the ages of 12 and 17, said the move to a location nearly 3,000 miles away “was made worse when my mother told us she wanted us to learn the language, so she enrolled us in a neighborhood French-speaking school.”

That school was École Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, a red-brick elementary school within walking distance of Shyamala’s hospital.

“It was a difficult transition because the only French I knew was from my ballet lessons,” Harris wrote in her memoir. “I always joked that I felt like a duck because I would spend all day at our new school saying, ‘Quoi? Quoi? Quoi?’ (What? What? What?).”

Harris, however, wasn’t afraid to be heard. When their landlord banned children from playing soccer on the lawn, she and her sister organized a protest—and the policy was reversed.

In the fall of 1977, Harris began seventh grade at the bilingual Fine Arts Core Education (FACE) school in downtown Montreal, whose alumni include singer Rufus Wainwright and actor Jay Baruchel.

She took drama lessons and learned to play the violin, horn and timpani.

Classmate Vicky Compton doesn’t have many memories of Harris at FACE. “I just remember her as warm and energetic,” she said. “Nothing more specific.”

During grades 9 through 11, Harris attended Westmount High School, located in an upscale neighborhood where primarily English was spoken.

“By the time I got to high school, I had gotten used to our new surroundings,” she recalled in her book. “I still missed home, my friends and family, and was always so happy to return during the summers and vacations … but I was used to most of it.”

At Westmount High, Harris joined the Pep Club, served on the yearbook committee and founded an all-girls dance group, Midnight Magic, which performed at school and in the community. Classmates recall her delight in dancing to Michael Jackson hits and Diana Ross classics.

“She was a perfect fit,” Dean Smith told the Daily Mail. “She fell in with the right people. Everyone accepted her easily.

“She was always a nice person. Always a fun person.”

Smith, who was a grade ahead of Harris, remembers seeing her dance at school and hanging out with other girls in the hallways.

“No boyfriends! She was a total academic,” he said. “She and her sister came here to go to school.”

Her best friend in high school, Wanda Kagan, told CTV Montreal.how Kamala helped her during their junior year.

“I was in a very physically and sexually abusive situation and she took me in to live with her,” said Kagan, 60. She was abused by her stepfather.

‘We were really close and best friends in high school, so I finally felt comfortable enough to tell her what I was going through.

‘Her first reaction was: “Then you should come and live with us”, without even asking her mother.’

Kamala and Wanda ended up sharing a room at Harris’s house. “Her mother and sister hugged me,” Kagan said. “I’m still so grateful.”

Kagan also recalled how Harris made plans for girls without prom dates to celebrate together. “That shows how long ago she was fighting for equality,” Kagan said CTV Montreal.

“That shows me her true character.”

In the 1981 Westmount High School yearbook, Harris is pictured resting her arm on Hugh Kwok’s shoulder. He said The Canadian Press in 2020 that Harris was a popular student.

“There was something special about her, she stood out from everyone,” he recalled.

Kwok told The Toronto Star in 2018: ‘She was a sweet, kind person. Very cheerful, very sociable.’

In her senior yearbook, Harris thanked her mother, urged her sister to “stay cool” and shared her favorite phrase: “No, I’m just playing!”

After graduating from Westmount High, Harris enrolled at Vanier College.

Randee Rosenthal Glassman remembers becoming fast friends with Harris.

“I remember her laugh,” Glassman told the Daily Mail. “She was pretty, but I don’t really know if she was popular with boys.”

In The Truths We Hold, Harris said of her time in Montreal: “What I wasn’t used to was the feeling of homesickness for my country. I felt a constant longing to be home again.”