Background
Dennison grew up on a farm in Renfrew County. He first left home at age 15 to work in the lumber camps of Northern Ontario. As a young man he would trek west to Saskatchewan in the summers to earn money helping with the harvest and pitching grain. By night, he would educate himself by reading Little Blue Books.
As a child and a young man he stammered so badly that he could not pronounce his own name, but after several failed attempts to correct his stammering, first at a school in Kitchener and later at a school in New York city he eventually learned how to control and correct the habit himself, opening his own School of Speech Correction.
Read more about this topic: William Dennison (Canadian Politician)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)