Who am I? (part 1)

Born May 14 (1958) in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia (Canada), I received the name Paul Stanley Hopkins from my English-born father Stanley and my Alberta-born mother Sheila. At present, I live in Calgary together with my Polish-born wife Maria. Also living here in Calgary, in their own homes, are my step-daughter Agnieszka, my brother Allan, and my sister Doreen with her husband Steve and three daughters (April, Michelle, and Samantha).

Education
After graduating from Belmont Secondary School in the Western Communities of Victoria (1976), I took my first degree at the University of Victoria, a first-class B.A. with Honours in German and a Major in Russian (1980). After spending two years travelling, teaching and doing volunteer work in Germany and the Netherlands, I took my second degree at the University of Waterloo, an M.A. in German language & literature (1984). After completion of this second degree, I studied German and Romance linguistics at the University of Mannheim for a year and then worked for two years towards a doctorate in linguistics at Simon Fraser University, but was unable to complete the degree program. Instead, after living in Poland for a year, I came back to the University of Victoria and there completed first an M.A. in linguistics (1991) and then a Ph.D. in linguistics (2001).