Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925, in Mundare, a small hamlet of some 400 inhabitants, largely immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, in northern Alberta, Canada, about 50 miles east of Edmonton. He was the youngest child and only boy among six children in a family of Eastern European descent. His parents had each emigrated to Canada when they were adolescents—his father from Krakow, Poland, and his mother from the Ukraine. Bandura's father worked laying track for the trans-Canada railroad, and his mother worked in the town's general store. After they garnered sufficient savings, they bought a homestead and engaged the ardous task of converting, practically with their own hands, heavily wooded land strewn boulders into a tillable farm. They had no formal education but placed a high value on educational attainment. For example, his father taught himself to read three languages, Polish, Russian, and German, and he also served as a member of the school board in the district where they lived.
Bandura wrote about this difficult, but productive, time in his family's struggle: "In addition to creating a workable farm, my father supervised the layout and construction of the road system in this newly opened homestead district. The beginning of this pioneer life was a tough struggle. In the first year, a layer of the thatched roof on the house my father built had to be dismantled and fed to the cattle because of a severe drought." In 1918, the family suffered a tragic loss when the flu pandemic claimed a young daughter. Bandura's mother walked from home to home helping to nurse back to health those who were fortunate to survive. Not long after, a son was killed in a hunting mishap with one of his friends. Recalls Bandura, "the Great Depression took a toll on my father's fun-loving spirit when he lost a section of land he had cultivated so laboriously. It pained him to see somebody else farming it." But through laborious effort, Bandura's father added further sections to the farm, and before long he purchased a model-T Ford, an odd cultural novelty at the time. Moreover, Bandura's parents knew how to celebrate life, and they also worked hard to create a festive family atmosphere. "My mother was a superb cook, and my father played a sprightly violin," recalls Bandura.
Young Bandura's elementary and high school years were spent at the one and only school in town, which being woefully short of teachers and resources left learning largely to the students' own initiative. For example, the entire curriculum of his high school mathematics class comprised a single textbook, which one beleaguered teacher endeavored to read ahead of her small but bright class of students. As a prank, the students conspired and stole the trigonometry book, which reduced the teacher to desperate pleading and homework concessions so that the class could resume. Two teachers handled the entire high school curriculum. "The students had to take charge of their own education," Bandura recalls. "Very often we developed a better grasp of the subjects than the overworked teachers." Although far off the path to academe, the school spawned an atypical class of graduates, virtually all of whom went on to attend universities throughout the world. For Bandura, the paucity of educational resources turned out to be an enabling factor that served him well rather than an insurmountable handicapping one. "The content of most textbooks is perishable," he observed, "but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time."
Al as a little tykeAl as an adolescentDuring summer vacations while in high school, Bandura's parents encouraged him to seek experiences beyond the confines of their small hamlet. One summer he worked in a furniture manufacturing plant in Edmonton, and the carpentry skills he acquired subsequently helped to support him through college, where he engaged in part-time carpentry work in a woodwork plant during the afternoons. The summer after young Bandura completed high school, he worked in the far North, at Whitehorse in the Yukon, filling holes to protect the Alaska Highway against its continual sinking into the fragile muskeg. "I remember flying into Whitehorse in a military plane," recalled the Professor, "then taking a bus to the base camp. As I got off the bus at 2 a.m., they were loading someone into the ambulance. I asked if someone was injured. The denizens of the camp replied, 'Hell no, that's our cook. He drank all the lemon extract for the alcohol, so we have to take him in to get his stomach pumped out.'" At Whitehorse he found himself in the midst of a curious collection of characters, most of whom had fled creditors, alimony, the draft board, or probation officers. "This wasn't Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," quipped Bandura. The main event of the month was when their illicit still, containing a huge mixture of potatoes and sugar, was ready with its batch of raw vodka. On one occasion, grizzly bears beat the men to it.