In 1928, our family, increased by the arrival of two brothers, moved permanently from the United States to Hamilton, Ontario.

Booth, c. 1937

My mother and I, during my high school and McMaster University years, would trudge six miles round trip through snow, rain and starry nights to evening services in the Unitarian Church, a large, empty Victorian style home. Always active in the youth club, I eventually was named continental vice president of the Young Peoples' Religious Union along with Dana McLean Greeley, its president, who later became the first president of the merged Unitarian Universalist movement in the United States.

After graduating from McMaster in 1934, during this nation's worst depression, I decided to make my hobby, the art of conjuring with which performances I had paid for much of my education, my temporary profession. After 17 months with a one-hour high school assembly program, I developed a 10-minute largely sleight of hand act for nightclubs and hotel room shows. Fortunately, I climbed rapidly and played many of the finest hotels and nightclubs in this country and Canada. Based on the fruits of this experience, I wrote two books for the profession: Forging Ahead in Magic and Marvels of Mystery. Unlike anything else in print, both became classics and helped ambitious newcomers to become more successful professionals.

Through all those years my vision of becoming a minister haunted me. Only an uneasiness that my temperament might not be suitable for an effective ministry held me back. Finally, in 1940, my misgivings evaporated. I closed a two week engagement as a magician in the Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee (now the Hilton) and went directly to the Meadville Theological School now located in Chicago, the seminary of my father 30 years earlier.

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