Photo Essay — Kamala Harris’s ‘Middle Class’ Upbringing in Westmount, Canada

As she runs for president in a political climate where victimhood is commonplace, Vice President Kamala Harris describes herself as having been raised “on the streets” — using fake accents to illustrate her point.

Unfortunately for this story, Breitbart News’ political editor (me) grew up in the same neighborhood where Harris lived from age 12 to 18 and can say that calling oneself “middle class” is definitely a bit of a stretch.

On Labor Day, Harris donned one of his countless faux dialects to address a working-class crowd in Detroit, Michigan.

However, it is virtually impossible that Harris organically adopted this accent — or “code-switching,” as the propagandists at the Associated Press call it — given that not only did she not grow up near the working class, she actually grew up in one of the most affluent enclaves of Canada, a Commonwealth nation with a distinctly un-American English.

At age 12, Harris left Berkeley after her mother was hired by McGill University to work on breast cancer research at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, the hospital where I was born. Local doctors described her mother as a “pioneer.”

The neighborhood Harris grew up in is called Westmount, a predominantly English neighborhood in the French province of Quebec.

She would certainly have experienced segregation while living there, but not the kind of segregation she claims to have experienced in recent years in her bizarre, obviously largely fabricated origin story, in which she claims to have come from a modest background and to have had some involvement in the civil rights movement.

Emma-Jo Morris / Breitbart News

There is no racial hostility in Montreal. Some racial political discourse has been imported from America in recent years, but it is not really part of the cultural consciousness or experience of someone who stopped living there before 2020.

Montreal is in fact a “melting pot” in terms of racial and ethnic diversity and has always had a unique ability to accept immigrants of all origins, races and religions while preserving its French culture through a series of linguistic and cultural laws that it began implementing in the 1970s.

In a story about Harris’ roots and personal experience, the only segregation she would have known would be economic segregation, as Montreal is the most economically segregated city in Canada, according to a University of Toronto study.

And in that city, Harris grew up in the most exclusive neighbourhood, which, at the time she lived there, was not only the most beautiful neighbourhood in Montreal, but also the wealthiest in all of Canada — a far cry from the hardships of the “streets” that Harris now claims to have struggled with.

According to an editorial written by her best friend from her Westmount High School days, Harris lived with her mother and sister Maya on Grosvenor Avenue in a Victorian house. As her friend explains, Harris enjoyed “family dinners and a stable life.”

This is the street where Harris grew up. These homes are priced at a minimum of over $1 million to $2 million CAD (about $750,000 to $1.5 million USD):

Emma-Jo Morris / Breitbart News

This fits with the lifestyle of most people in this neighborhood. It’s one of the luckiest places to live. Harris implies that it’s the “streets” that are the cause of this phenomenon, which is a tongue-in-cheek joke that many who grow up there make.

This is the main street that runs through the middle of the neighborhood, an avenue that bears the same name:

This is the street, Redfern Ave., on the corner of which Harris High School is located:

Emma-Jo Morris / Breitbart News

This is the library located at the edge of Westmount Park, where she could have studied or borrowed books and where she would have had to walk to get home and to school each day:

Emma-Jo Morris / Breitbart News

This is where Harris would have spent time and where many, if not most, of his classmates lived:

Emma-Jo Morris / Breitbart News

Harris has crafted a persona and promoted policies based on what suits her politically at a given moment to exploit opportunities that present themselves to get ahead, and it has worked pretty well (so far). Luckily for her, she found herself running for president at a time when the media and elites are at their dumbest and laziest, not bothering to analyze politics and instead boil down a candidate’s identity and worldview to physical traits, like race. So she’s taking advantage of that moment — using her race as a kind of tool to give the opposite impression of the immense privilege (as you can see) she actually comes from, and distracting from her lack of connection or solutions for the real working class.

There is nothing wrong with coming from this neighborhood, as you can see. It is a beautiful neighborhood. The people are happy. It is a safe and wonderful place to grow up. However, Harris’ “lower middle class” narrative is not working.

It’s time for a new song.

Emma-Jo Morris is a political editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow she on Twitter.