Page 2 - Bridges For Peace Continuing Ed Module 1

Dr. G. Douglas Young
“The Gentile with a Heart of a Jew”

Part 1
George Douglas Young was born in 1910 while his parents, missionary Luther
Young and his wife Katherine Mair, were spending their first years in Ham
Heung, Korea, studying the language and learning the customs of a strange
country.

At age nine Douglas’s mother Katherine died. In later years, he remembered the
amazing difference between the crying and wailing of those in the Korean funeral
processions, and the sad yet joyful singing at his mother’s funeral. His father’s
ministry was interrupted by the loss of his wife, and the family came home to
Canada on furlough. Later, back in Korea, Luther Young married Meriam Fox, a
single Presbyterian missionary.

In 1926, when Douglas was 16 years old, the family came home on furlough
again. He would not return with them to Korea this time, however, remaining in
Canada for high school and later University. Douglas was a very sensitive and
intelligent boy. Upon graduating from High School he was awarded the medal for
the highest grades in the entire province of Nova Scotia, Canada, this in spite of
the fact that he was working hard to earn his own living while attending school.

As he finished High School, he had his heart set on medicine. He enrolled at
Acadia University and settled into a tough grind of work and studies, majoring in
biology with a minor in botany. He applied to Dalhousie Medical School and was
accepted. However, with few scholarships and grants in those days, medical
studies would prove to be too expensive for him. It seemed for a time that he
would not realize his dream of becoming a doctor and would have to settle for
second best. But God had other, even greater plans, as he would soon find out.

He tried selling insurance for a time, but that didn’t work out. Next he got a job
with the Halifax Herald newspaper. He learned to play the bagpipes, and
enjoyed marching in parades.

The Herald newspaper sent him as a reporter to work in Amherst, and there he
met the young lady who would become the love of his life. A friend had a visitor,
a young lady from Sydney, NS, whom he thought Doug should meet, and the shy
and retiring reporter immediately recognized a jewel when he saw it! Before long
Douglas and Georgina (called “Snook”) were engaged, then married, but years of
financial stress would await them.

Soon after their marriage, Doug’s brother John, just graduated from Acadia
University, came to visit them. John told Douglas how he had sensed God’s call
to enter Christian ministry. Doug had already sensed that newspaper work would