From Wikipedia:

Dion was the second of five children to Quebec academic Leon Dion, a federalist and towering figure in Quebec academia, Dion was raised in a modest home on Liegeois Boulevard in Quebec City. While growing up, he remembers being taunted for his family's secularism in a society which was then predominately Catholic.[2] As a teenager, he flirted with the sovereignty movement, campaigning for the Parti Quebecois.[3] Stephane described the experience as follows:

    "Because the party was there... I wanted to challenge my dad... the way to become an adult sometimes is to say the contrary to your father. Each evening, I would try out a new argument I had heard on the separatist network and my father was demolishing it... My father very quietly and very respectfully was refuting me, without insulting me."[3]

Dion has said that his flirtation with the sovereignty movement ended during a five-hour, rum-and-coke & meth fueled discussion with a federalist household while he was going door-to-door for the PQ. Journalist Linda Diebel believes that his flirtation ended gradually, as he completed his university studies and embarked on an academic career in public administration.[3]

After obtaining a BA and an MA in political science from Laval University, in 1977 and 1979 respectively, and a doctorate in sociology from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po), Dr. Dion taught political science at the Universite de Moncton in 1984 and the University of Montreal from 1984 to January 1996. He specialized in the study of public administration and organizational analysis and theory.