Gloria Rand

Shatner was born on March 22, 1931, in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to a Conservative Jewish household. His parents were Ann (née Garmaise; 1905–1992) and Joseph Shatner (1898–1967), a clothing manufacturer. He is the middle of three children; his older sister was Joy Rutenberg (1928–2023) and his younger sister is Farla Cohen (1940–). His patrilineal family name was Schattner; it was his grandfather, Wolf Schattner, who anglicized the spelling. All four of Shatner's grandparents were Jewish immigrants: they came from settlements in Ukraine and Lithuania, which were then under the rule of Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire.

Shatner attended two schools in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Willingdon Elementary School and West Hill High School, and is an alumnus of the Montreal Children's Theatre. He studied economics at the McGill University Faculty of Management in Montreal, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1952. Shatner was a camp counselor at a B'nai B'rith camp in the Laurentians. Over 6 weeks, Shatner helped teenage Holocaust survivor Fred Bild learn English.

In 2011, McGill University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters. He was granted the same accolade by the New England Institute of Technology in May 2018.