McMaster at that time was very small and strictly Baptist. Smoking, alcohol, and dancing were strictly forbidden. Professors were required to be “good, active Christians,” and many of the students were planning to become ministers. I could not understand how people who had been trained at first-rate universities could talk about their personal relationship to Jesus. Nevertheless almost all of my friends at McMaster were pious Christians. I did not blame them for trying to convert me to Christianity, away not from Judaism but from my lack of any faith.
I would have liked to study medicine. As a doctor, I thought, one could really do something to help people. But that was not possible, not only because McMaster had no medical school and going elsewhere was out of the question for financial reasons, but also because my father could not see me or perhaps any woman as a doctor. I was also not particularly good in the physical sciences. So I majored in French and German and in addition to the compulsory courses in the humanities registered for as many courses as I could fit into my schedule. The university allowed me to finish the four-year course in three years. Apart from my German professor, the teaching staff was excellent, and I profited much more from McMaster than later from the famous University of Chicago.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 19