Amiel's mother remarried and, in November 1952, the couple emigrated with Barbara, her sister and half-brother, to Hamilton, Ontario. She never saw her biological father again after her mother remarried. Family difficulties, including a period when her step-father was unemployed, precipitated her living independently for periods of time from the age of 14 during which she gained employment to support herself. "My mother loathed me and saw me as a hindrance to her life", she told Alice Thomson of "The Times" in 2020. Her natural father took his own life in 1956 after the discovery of theft from his clients. Amiel's family decided not to disclose this information; she did not discover the truth for three years. In 1959, she entered the University of Toronto, and took a degree in Philosophy and English. Amiel was then sympathetic to communism, and was a delegate in 1962 to the Soviet-organised World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland.