ABSTRACT
Early Life William Maxwell Aitken was born May 25, 1879, in Maple, Ontario, Canada, where his father was a Presbyterian minister, but the family soon moved to Newcastle, New Brunswick, where young Max grew up. His father, William Cuthbert Aitken, had emigrated from Scotland to pursue a ministerial career, and his mother, Jane Noble, Canadian by birth but also of Scottish ancestry, was the daughter of a storekeeper. Although later in life Aitken referred to his relatively poor background, in fact it was comfortably middle-class. He was the third of ten children. His was a happy childhood and Aitken early developed a reputation for mischief, something he kept throughout his life. He attended a local school but failed the Latin portion of his college entrance examinations and instead chose the law for a career.
