R.A. Harris Personal Bio

R. Alan Harris

I was born in Toronto in 1935. I lived in York Township and attended Lambton Park Public School and Runnymede Collegiate. I obtained my B.A. at the University of Toronto (Victoria College), my LLB at the University of Toronto Law School, and was called to the bar in 1964. Some say I majored in ping-pong throughout my schooling.

My major hobby has always been speculating, starting with the stock market at age 15 and progressing to futures trading and venture capital. My stock and futures trading has always been technically oriented and I keep hundreds of charts updated daily, originally by hand, now by computers.

I married Erika in 1962 and we have two sons, Gregory and Jeffrey. Gregory and I became partners in 1990.

Another of my passions is sports cars. I started off with a series of 1949 MGTCs and progressed through an Opel GT, to a Porsche and a Ferrari. In my day I raced, rallied, hill climbed and diced-on-ice. I recently participated in one of the firm’s go-cart events.

While I have always been a litigator, I did carry on an extensive corporate practice for many years, and conducted business in the Cayman Islands in the early 1970s. Later I set up a representative office for Harris + Harris LLP in the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1990. I have always been an enthusiastic snorkeller and in 2000 I learned to scuba-dive in Mustique and the Turks, and I was certified in 2001.

My wife Erika, who was born in Austria, has instilled in me the love of exotic traveling. In the last few years we have traveled to Venezuela, the former Yugoslavia, India, Morocco, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Istanbul.

Amongst the venture capital investments my partners and friends have financed are mobile home parks, hi-tech companies, dot. com companies and a publishing company. The latter published a Canadian best-seller “Take Your Money and Run” authored by Alex Doulis.
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