Education
McPhail studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1979. Carleton began in 1942 as Carleton College, a private, non-denominational evening college created to serve young people in wartime Ottawa, including veterans returning from the Second World War. The institution was chartered as a university in 1952 and took its present name in 1957. Its 1970s were a period of consolidation, with steady enrolment growth despite financial constraints.
He then studied law at the University of Windsor, receiving a Bachelor of Laws in 1984. The university traces its roots to Assumption College, founded in 1857 and closely affiliated with the University of Western Ontario from 1919, and it was established as an independent institution in 1962. Its Faculty of Law admitted its first class in 1968 and conferred its first law degrees in 1971, so McPhail completed his legal education at a law faculty that was only about sixteen years old at the time.
