Origins...

As for my background: I am mongrel, descended from Eurasian mongrelian tribes...

OK, truth: my father was born in Sidney Mines, Nova Scotia, where there are many Campbells indeed; his father came from New Brunswick, of Scottish Presbyterian origins; his mother came from Newfoundland, of mixed Irish/Scottish background, although apparently she went to a Baptist church. My mother though (whose maiden name is Scholnick) is of Polish Jewish ancestry. She was born and grew up in Montreal, not far from where I live now. Her father died of a stroke when she was 10, and her mother went insane shortly after that, then she lived a few years in foster homes and started to work very young, i.e. 14 or 15; not an enviable upbringing. Although I have aunts and uncles on her side who are very Jewish (even a cousin who is Hassidic), when my mother married my father, she pretty much turned her back on Jewish customs and traditions. My father though was of the Communist religion; they met in Toronto, in a Socialist Youth organization. So I grew up in T.O. with parents who saw religion as an opiate based on lies and superstition, while we put up Christmas trees and hunted for Easter eggs and enjoyed other pagan paraphernalia generally co-opted by Christianity. Why I'm now living only a few blocks from where my mother grew up in the direst poverty is quite beyond me.