Background
David Donnell was born on October 13, 1939, in St. Marys, Ontario, Canada. He is a son of Arnold Alexander and Florence Donnell. Donnell’s mother was born in White Plains, New York, where her father was an affluent dentist. Donnell’s father was a Greek and Roman classics specialist who was born in Mazatlan, Mexico, of artist parents, his mother a painter from southwestern Ontario and his father a photographer from Glasgow and later San Francisco.