Attending peace rallies, identifying strongly with the beat generation and thinking deeply about life, at 17 Amelia rebelled against the advice of her family that she take business courses. She preferred to pursue her strong interest in biology.

"I was a bit of a beatnik at that time, hippies weren’t in style quite yet."

Grade 11 brought unprecedented intensity. After school, she assisted Reg Hall in teaching and held down a job to pay for classes. Her small size was an advantage in partnering, and she constantly demonstrated, learning to take risks, leaping and being thrown. Pushing intensely on all fronts, she suffered a near nervous breakdown.  

Turning 18, Amelia enrolled in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's General Division School. In six months, combining intensive training with earning her living led to exhaustion, forcing her to stop dancing and earn enough money to return home. She missed the establishment of Arnold Spohr’s new scholarship program by less than a year. 

Frequenting Regina’s Fourth Dimension Beatnik club (“the 4D”), she befriended the Kingston Trio, and she and her sister Diane caught a ride east with them. After a quick visit to relatives, they arrived in Toronto, where Amelia swiftly landed a job at the Three Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Euclid Avenue. Despite having no ballroom dance experience, all the partnering she’d done made her a quick study.

She soon embarked on classes at the National Ballet School, making her rent by working on a TV factory assembly line. NBS offered talented students a “Student Special” allowing them to take classes in exchange odd jobs, without participating in the academic program and fellow dance student Barry Smith suggested she apply.

Amelia approached School Principal Betty Oliphant. As Amelia later recalled it, Oliphant replied, “One in a hundred make it in dance. Why hit your head against a brick wall?” Bitterly disillusioned, Amelia wept, ripped up her her pointe shoes and vowed to quit dancing.

Determined to remove dance from her life, she took a different route to work to avoid encountering any dancers in the neighbourhood of the NBS where she lived.