 Gurion Joseph Hyman was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and lived above his parents’ bookstore on Spadina Avenue, Hyman's Book and Art Shoppe, until marrying Ruth Alice Warner in 1952.The son of prominent Jewish community activists, Ben Zion Hyman and Fannie Konstantynowski (a descendant of Rabbi Shabbatai ha-Kohen), Gurion Hyman graduated from the Pharmacy program at the University of Toronto in 1946.During his early years, Gurion Hyman was exposed to multiple languages and developed fluency or significant proficiency in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and Polish.