stylistic:tone, information:highlighting, structural:expansion, linguistic:voice_change, structural:scholar_edition
Early life

James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954, in Kapuskasing, Ontario, to Philip Cameron, an electrical engineer, and Shirley (née Lowe), an artist and nurse. He is the first of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. His paternal great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Balquhidder, Scotland, in 1825. Cameron spent summers on his grandfather's farm in southern Ontario. He attended Stamford Collegiate in Niagara Falls. At age 17, Cameron and his family moved from Chippawa to Brea, California. He attended Sonora High School and then moved to Brea Olinda High School. Classmates recalled that he was not a sportsman but instead enjoyed building things that "either went up into the air or into the deep".

After high school, Cameron enrolled at Fullerton College, a community college in 1973 to study physics. He switched subjects to English, but left the college at the end of 1974. Cameron worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver and a high school janitor. He drank beer, frequently consumed cannabis and LSD, and wrote in his free time. During this period, he learned about special effects by reading other students' work on " optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology " at the USC library. After the excitement of seeing Star Wars in 1977, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.