In 1939, after Canada declared war on Germany, his mother sent him back to Toronto to live with his father. Lincoln met Yvonne (Tody) Harrison at a dance in Toronto. The youngest of four daughters of Robert, a railway porter, and his wife Edythe (née Lewis), Harrison lived in Hamilton, Ontario. Alexander was smitten by her and resolved to marry her. Because he was too young to enlist in the armed forces, he took a job as a machinist making anti-aircraft guns at a factory in Hamilton to be close to her.