Andrew Reid was among the third generation of the Reid family to live in West Vancouver. He left Glasgow Scotland in June 1920 with his twin brothers and parents, Robert and Bessie Reid, to make a permanent home in West Vancouver with his grandmother. His grandparents, Andrew and Jessie Reid and their youngest son Jim had emigrated from Killin, Scotland in 1911, following two other sons, Andrew and Peter who had already settled in West Vancouver.

His grandparents built a home on four lots near Vinson Creek, on the south side of Esquimalt Avenue, just West of 14th Street. His grandfather died in 1913, and his grandmother Jessie died in 1922, a couple of years after his family’s arrival. Andrew Reid’s uncle, Jim Reid, built and operated a logging outfit at West Bay prior to 1914. As a boy growing up in West Vancouver, Andrew Reid’s first job was delivering newspapers that paid 14 dollars a month. He was also a part-time delivery boy for Roberts Meat Market. In 1936, Andrew Reid married Chris Law, and moved to North Vancouver where they raised three children.

Andrew Reid’s uncle, Andrew Reid, who died in 1953, operated a meat and cake processing business which became the centre of an international controversy in 1951 when his haggis was refused for import to the United States because it was not deemed "pure."

The third generation Andrew Reid moved to Victoria in 1965. In 1986, on a visit back to the former site of his boyhood home, which had long been replaced by an apartment building, a fir tree that Andrew Reid had planted with his father before 1930 was still standing on the south boulevard near 1412 Esquimalt and was over 30 metres tall. In 1986, Andrew Reid recorded memories of his boyhood growing up in West Vancouver.