1888 - Born in Point St Charles, Quebec on December 6. 1888. He was the youngest of 14 children for Georg Hugo Eckstein and Wilhelmina Hildebrandt. They had only arrived in Montreal the previous year from Hamilton, Ontario, where they had been for only a few years after immigrating to America (New York) from Sweden. Both parents were musically trained and all the children played a musical instrument.

1891 -He began playing piano at age 3, when he walked into the family's living room and plucked out on the piano, with one finger, a song that he'd heard a visitor play the day before.("Home Sweet Home")

1894 -"Discovered" by Moretzky Upton, a music teacher, with who, among others, he studied with for the next six years. At the time, Willie was earning pocket money playing in a store off of St.Catharine Street to attract customers. He became known as "The Swedish Boy Wonder" and was hired for 2 years to play at the Canadian National Exhibition for the Bell Piano Company.

1900 - He was offered a music scholarship to the McGill Conservatory at age 12, by memorizing 47 pages of Mendelssohn's Concerto in D minor but he declined, and with the award money he studied for 2 years in Sweden and Germany, where he was to give a royal command performance.When he returned, he was giving recitals in a New York store window when he was offered $15,000.00 a year to play the vaudeville circuit.A huge amount in those days. "Lack of money interfered with my ambitions. My family needed aid and when my father received a fabulous offer for my services in vaudeville, he accepted!." said Billy in 1961, explaining that if he had a choice, he would have pursued the concert recital circuit.
It was in this period that he was given star billing as " The Boy Padrewski " on the Keith / Albee, Proctor and Orpheum circuits, where he was given top billing over such luminaries as Houdini, Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth.. He toured most canadian provinces and almost all of the states. He arrived in San Francisco just after the 1906 quake when many in the city were living in tents.After his 3rd appearance at the Chase Theater in Washington, DC, he was invited to give a performance at the White House, on the gold grand piano for, then president, Theodore Roosevelt. Paderewski, himself, came to see the boy that was using his name, and approved." A prodigy, no doubt!" he said at the time

Willie was presented to the public with a great deal of gimmickery. To emphasize his "child prodigy" image he was dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and Buster Brown collar. This facade was easy to maintain for a few years as he was very small physically, but when he started to grow a beard, he had to shave twice a day to maintain the childlike illusion.
Once the act began to seem like a fraud, bookings ceased. Soon Willie found himself on New York's 128th Street, playing with singing waiters for coin tossing customers, where he was lucky to make $18.00 a week. Depressed, having known the bright lights and acclaim of earlier days, he departed New York and came home to Montreal. By then the family had moved to Hallowell St. in Westmount, PQ, at the extreme west end of St.Catherine St.

1906 -When William returned to Montreal he took on work at the Lyric Hall on St. Catherine St., where he played for 6 years. Beatrice Lillie debuted her illustrious career here while still a teen, dressed as an indian maiden and singing "My Little Kick-a-poo" with Willie accompanying her routines on the piano.In 1910, he wrote his first known piece "The Royal Highlanders March and 2 Step".
Soon the vaudeville that was being performed in theaters began to be replaced by the silent film revolution. A new 1,000 seat theater was being built on the south-east corner of Mansfield and St. Catherine by George Ganetakos, It was to be called The Strand and Willie was offered the job based on his work at the Lyric.He accepted and was about to enter his period of greatest celebrity....

1912 - Willie excelled at accompanying movies.With his exceptional technique, classical training and uncanny ability to instantly translate what was happening on the screen with something from his vast repetoire, news soon spread fast and far. In very little time people were flocking from all over to see the little man billed as "The world's foremost movie interpreter". The movie, for most, was secondary. Willie, along with percussionist Armand Meerte, developed a large and very steady following that included Norma Shearer, then a 15 year old Westmount High student, who would skip school and sit in the front rows of the theater so that she could hear Billy play her favorite song "Beautiful Thoughts". She would later go on to star in the films that she so loved to watch .Fifi Dorsay was another hollywood bound teen who would frequent the Strand.
One evening, Sergei Rachmaninoff, the greatest concert pianist of the time, was in town and attended a showing to hear the man he had heard so much about. He shook his head in utter disbelief and muttered "Impossible" and "I don't believe it" while watching Willie. Other world reknown pianists to attend, at various times, were Joseph Hoffman and Vladimir dePachmann.