After spending the World War IIWorld War II years in several cities and small towns in western Canada, I moved with my parents and sister to Edmonton, Alberta in 1946 to complete my schooling and undergraduate university studies. This chapter is divided into four parts, my childhood years (1940–1951), junior high school years (1951–1954), high school years (1954–1957), and my 4 years at the University of Alberta (U of A) (1957–1961). Finding my way to a career in mathematics and physics was not easy since I had many interests and hobbiesLawrence’s hobbies when I was growing up, including music, boy scouts, woodworking, Ukrainian handicrafts, archeryArchery, hockey, baseball, and dancing. Under pressure from my parents to choose a “profession,” in my last year of high school I decided that I would go to university to become a dentist. However, after 1 year in an unpleasant zoology lab together with an enjoyable calculus class, I switched to the second year of the honors applied mathematics program at the U of A. Throughout high school and university, I also studied music theory and fluteFlute performance with the then Western Board of Music, affiliated with the U of A. In the late 1950s, I also began to think seriously about a music career, and in pursuit of this possibility, I went off to study advanced flute performance at Aspen Music School (Colorado) in the summer of 1958 (Chap. 26 ). However, the competition was fierce, which convinced me that a career in university teaching was more to my liking. So off I went to Adelaide, Australia in January 1962 to begin graduate studies in mathematics under the sponsorship of a Rotary Fellowship for International Understanding.