Upon completing his degree at Harvard, Johnston again looked at an NHL career, contemplating attending the Boston Bruins training camp. Instead, he attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge, obtaining a Bachelor of Laws with honours in 1965, and another with first class honours from Queen's University in 1966. During that period, Johnston married his high school sweetheart, Sharon, with whom he has five daughters. Johnston was hired by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, but never worked for the firm, instead taking a one-year leave of absence, which continues to today. Academic career (1966-2010) Johnston has had a long academic career, during which he came to specialize in securities regulation, corporation law, public policy and information technology law. After 1966, he worked for two years as an assistant professor at the Queen's University Faculty of Law and then joined the University of Toronto's law faculty, where he taught until 1974, eventually being promoted to the rank of full professor. Johnston was then appointed as dean of the University of Western Ontario Law School, serving between 1974 and 1979, at which time he was elevated to become the fourteenth Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University. It was during his time in that role that he became acquainted with Pierre and Margaret Trudeau, as the Johnston children played with the Trudeau children when the families were at their adjacent cottages in the Laurentians. Johnston stepped down in 1994 as principal of McGill to remain at the university only as a law professor until he was in 1999 installed as the fifth President of the University of Waterloo. At that time, the couple acquired a home in Heidelberg, Ontario, and began operating an adjacent horse training ranch, Chatterbox Farm. Boards, commissions, and media (until 2010) Johnston has moderated several televised leaders' debates, the first being between Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark, and Ed Broadbent, prior to the 1979 federal election, and he returned five years later to play the same role before the election of 1984, in a debate featuring Brian Mulroney, John Turner, and Broadbent. He also moderated the provincial leaders' debate featuring David Peterson, Bob Rae, and Larry Grossman, in the run up to the Ontario general election in 1987. Johnston has also acted as moderator of two public affairs panel discussion programmes, The Editors and The World in Review, which aired in the 1990s on both CBC Newsworld in Canada and PBS in the United