When they didn’t play America, Errol brought the children on annual trips around the country. Once, Elon got to fly with him in his twin-prop plane to an emerald mine in Zambia in which Errol owned a share. They filled the plane with chocolate bars intended as a bribe for the customs agents.278,450
At age eleven, Elon wanted to move to the US. He had visited the country before together with his father. America meant freedom, and freedom to the young Elon meant movies, technology, and comics. “I have to admit I might have been a bit too fascinated about America, but it really did seem everything was possible there and, at the time, not so possible in South Africa,” he said. Elon obviously couldn’t move on his own, so his plan was to convince his father to move with him. All three siblings lived with their mother, and Elon thought it was unfair that no one lived with their father.59,60 Errol said yes. Then he changed his mind because he felt he had established himself as an engineer in South Africa, so he didn’t want to restart in another country.363
As Elon grew older, there were still no signs of weaknesses in the apartheid system. He knew the government would force him to serve the two years of compulsory military service for white men. Joining the military wasn’t an issue. What he didn’t want was to participate in the suppression of the black people, which is what the military did. “Who wants to serve in a fascist army?” Elon asked. To avoid joining the military, Elon had to revive the old plans to move to the US.263
Once again, Elon tried to convince either of his parents to emigrate across the Atlantic Ocean. His mother was born in Canada and her father was an American citizen. But because his mother hadn’t received her American citizenship at a certain age before her father died, Elon couldn’t get an American citizenship for himself. So he didn’t have any other option than moving to Canada. His mother had a Canadian citizenship she could pass on to her son.327
As his grandfather Joshua once had, but in the opposite direction, Elon decided to move across the Atlantic Ocean. Just before his sixteenth birthday, Elon and his brother Kimbal took the bus to the Canadian embassy where they applied for passports. Kimbal also knew he wanted to leave South Africa before he had to join the military.71
Three weeks after the passport arrived, and despite that Elon’s parents didn’t want him to leave South Africa, he bought a one-way plane ticket to Montreal, Canada.128 He financed the plane ticket by selling shares in a pharmaceutical company. One year earlier, Elon had begun speculating in stocks; tracking them in the local newspaper.4 He had tripled his money before he got bored of it.258
Elon was now ready for a new adventure. “We humans are explorers by nature, that’s why we’ve ventured to the bottom of the oceans and the top of the tallest mountains,” he said. “That’s also why we have sent men to the Moon and astronauts to live on the orbiting International Space Station. It was this innate desire for exploration that also motivated me to leave South Africa.”62
What Do I Do Now?
In 1989, Elon Musk took the first small step on Canadian soil. When he flew away from South Africa, his mother Maye was so proud her son had become independent. But while still at Montreal’s airport, the first thing Elon did was to call his mother. “What do I do now?” he asked. Elon decided to take the bus from Montreal to Vancouver. It allowed him to see Canada from the highway while he could figure out where to go and what to do with his life in the new country.327
He traveled to the region where his mother lived before the family immigrated to South Africa. To find somewhere to sleep, he visited distant relatives that he never met before, and to support himself, he worked with various low-wage jobs. Elon’s cousin owned a wheat farm in Swift Current, so he began working there. The work consisted of tending vegetables and shoveling grain. He then moved to a lumber mill in British Columbia where he cut logs and cleaned boilers. “You had to put on this hazmat suit [hazardous materials suit] and shimmy through this little tunnel,” Elon said. “Then you take this steaming goop and shovel it back into the hole you just came through and wait for someone else to put it into a wheelbarrow.”51
The savings account consisted of only a few thousand dollars. To be sure that the money lasted, Elon had to conserve his resources. He bought large quantities of oranges, pasta sauce, and sausages. Because of the large quantities, he had to eat the same food for a whole week. To get the necessary vitamins, he ate one orange a day. The rest of the day he ate hot dogs with bread from a loaf – not buns since they were too expensive.350 “I tried various experiments to live on less than one dollar a day without getting scurvy,” Elon said. “You can cook spaghetti sauce with, like, a third of a green pepper, or buy a thing of sausages and a loaf of bread to make hot dogs for 25 or 30 cents apiece.”307
Someone who wasn’t happy when Elon moved to Canada was his sister Tosca. She missed her genius brother and wanted to join him in Canada. Her mother Maye explained to her that Elon was eighteen years old and Tosca was fifteen years old, and that made it obvious she couldn’t join her brother. But Tosca refused to accept the answer. While Maye was away on a trip, Tosca came up with the brilliant idea to sell the family’s house. If they didn’t have a house to live in, they all would have to move to Canada. When Maye returned from the trip, Tosca had put the house on the market and sold it. “I think we must leave now,” Tosca said. Maye wasn’t convinced.49
Years later, Maye changed her mind, so Maye, Tosca, and Kimbal moved to Canada. Almost everyone else in the family would move away from South Africa. Elon’s grandmother Wyn remained in South Africa, working with wood carving, pottery, and painting. In 1999, she also moved back to Canada together with her daughter Edith Lynne.85 Like his father and grandmother, Scott became a chiropractor and would study and work both in Canada and in US.94
One year after arriving to Canada, and while working at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Elon applied to the prestigious Queen’s University in Kingston.55,61 The school was known for its high academic standard and wealthy students. It was common to hear comments like, “It took a long time to learn how to drive because my family was chauffeured everywhere.” You could also order a latte in the cafe, which in the 1990s was exotic.
Before Elon applied to the university, he chose between if he should study at the University of Waterloo or at the Queen’s University. “It was a close call for me between the University of Waterloo and Queen’s,” Elon said. “I was going to do physics and engineering at Waterloo, but then I visited the campus, but there didn’t seem to be any girls there. So, I visited Queen’s, and there were girls there. I didn’t want to spend my undergraduate time with a bunch of dudes.”128
Elon began to study business and physics, but he never attended the classes. The genius boy used his photographic memory, so he read the textbooks and showed up for the exams. He thought dating girls was much more interesting than studying. It was after all the sole reason why he picked the school.327
One of the girls he dated was Justine Wilson. One year younger than Elon, she grew up together with her sister in the small town Peterborough, Canada. Both her parents gave her a lot of space and freedom, and her outdoors-loving father said she had more or less raised herself.139 Those who didn’t know her thought she was European looking. After a journey through Australia, she began studying at the Queen’s University, and was now a first-year student.