Anthony Bekenn was born in East Africa, in the southern part of Tanzania during a cyclone. His father, Michael, was a district officer in the Tanganyika government, the result being that Anthony lived a peripatetic life up to the age of eight.

Initially he was home schooled by his mother, Sheila, who had previously been a school teacher in Wolverhampton in the UK. He was subsequently educated in England, attending Tettenhall College, when his parents returned there in the early sixties. He completed high school in Canada, after the family emigrated to Vancouver B.