 By her own admission, though, she was "ferociously ambitious, even as a young girl", and planned to overcome her deficiencies through careful camouflage, sheer determination, and charm.The childhood and adolescence that Shearer once described as "a pleasant dream" ended in 1918, when her father's company collapsed, and her older sister, Athole, suffered her first serious mental breakdown.Forced to move into a small, dreary house in a "modest" Montreal suburb, the sudden plunge into poverty only strengthened Shearer's determined attitude