Early and Family Life
Bennett was born in Hastings, Albert County, New Brunswick, Canada, one of five children born to Andrew Havelock Bennett and Mary Emma Burns. His father was a third cousin of Richard Bedford Bennett, eleventh Prime Minister of Canada.
He left formal school in grade nine, during the First World War, to take a job in a hardware store, but would pursue correspondence courses as an adult to improve his knowledge and job potential. He joined the Air Force but the war ended before he saw active duty. At the age of 18, he and his family moved to Edmonton, Alberta and then to Westlock, Alberta, where Bennett's father operated a hardware store.
In 1927 Bennett married Annie Elizabeth May Richards, known as "May". In 1930 they moved to Victoria and then Kelowna with their two children, Anita and R.J. A third child, William ("Bill") was born in 1932. In Kelowna he joined the local Gyro Club, Masonic Lodge, the Kelowna Club, and was active in the United Church of Canada.
Read more about this topic: W. A. C. Bennett
Famous quotes containing the words early, family and/or life:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“... a family I know ... bought an acre in the country on which to build a house. For many years, while they lacked the money to build, they visited the site regularly and picnicked on a knoll, the site’s most attractive feature. They liked so much to visualize themselves as always there, that when they finally built they put the house on the knoll. But then the knoll was gone. Somehow they had not realized they would destroy it and lose it by supplanting it with themselves.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“I think it’s the real world. The people we’re writing about in professional sports, they’re suffering and living and dying and loving and trying to make their way through life just as the brick layers and politicians are.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)