Saul Forbes Rae was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 diplomat during the Pearsonian era of Canadian foreign policy.

Rae's father was born Goodman Cohen in Palanga

Palanga

Palanga and beautiful sand dunes. Officially Palanga has the status of a city municipality and includes Šventoji, Nemirseta, Būtingė and other settlements, which are considered as part of the city of Palanga.-Legend:...

, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

. The Cohen family had moved to Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 in the pogrom of the 1890s, and there Goodman met Helen McRae, the daughter of a draughtsman in the Glasgow shipyards. The romance and subsequent marriage caused considerable turmoil in both families, and as a result they moved to Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...

 in 1912. Saul was born in Hamilton on December 31. He had two siblings, an older sister, Grace, who went to work as a dancer at the Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...

, and a younger brother Jackie who had a long career in Canadian show business. The three worked in vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 in Canada in the 1920s under the name "the three little Raes of Sunshine".

Saul Rae graduated from Jarvis Collegiate, University College at the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

, and went on to earn a doctorate from the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 as a Massey Fellow. He also studied at Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

, and went on to lecture at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 where he also worked at the American Institute of Public Opinion. He was a pioneering public opinion researcher co-authoring with George Gallup

George Gallup

George Horace Gallup was an American pioneer of survey sampling techniques and inventor of the Gallup poll, a successful statistical method of survey sampling for measuring public opinion.-Biography:...

 the 1940 book The Pulse of Democracy: Public Opinion and How It Works.

He married Lois Esther George in 1939. She was the daughter of Stanley George, a Hampstead general practitioner, and Mildred, whose family was from Watford, England. She had studied at Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College...

. The two met at a summer school organized by Sir Norman Angell

Norman Angell

Sir Ralph Norman Angell was an English lecturer, journalist, author, and Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic Control...

 in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, and were married in Baltimore, Maryland at the outbreak of the second World War.

Saul Rae joined the Department of External Affairs in 1940, and would spend four decades with the civil service as a career diplomat. Rae was one of the first diplomats to serve in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 after its liberation

Liberation of Paris

The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...

 in 1944, having served as assistant to General Georges Vanier

Georges Vanier

Major-General Georges-Philéas Vanier was a Canadian soldier and diplomat who served as Governor General of Canada, the 19th since Canadian Confederation....

, Canada's representative to the Free French in Algiers

Algiers

' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...

.

In 1955, he worked on the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 as deputy to the Canadian Commissioner, Sherwood Lett

Sherwood Lett

Sherwood Lett, was a Canadian soldier, lawyer, diplomat, and jurist.-Early life:Born in Iroquois, Ontario, he came to British Columbia in his early years. He started his education at the McGill University College of British Columbia which became the University of British Columbia. In 1915, he...

. The role of the commission was to supervise the peace settlement at the end of the First Indochina War

First Indochina War

The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...

. He later served as Canadian Minister in the United States, and was Canada's Ambassador to the UN

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 in both Geneva and New York, Mexico and the Netherlands. He retired in 1980 after suffering a series of small strokes.

Saul and Lois Rae had four children: Jennifer, born in 1943, John, born in 1945, Robert (Bob), born in 1948, and David, born in 1957. Jennifer worked at IMAX for many years, and was active in politics with her brothers John and Bob. Bob Rae

Bob Rae

Robert Keith "Bob" Rae, PC, OC, OOnt, QC, MP is a Canadian politician. He is the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre and interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada....

, was leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party

Ontario New Democratic Party

The Ontario New Democratic Party or , formally known as New Democratic Party of Ontario, is a social democratic political party in Ontario, Canada. It is a provincial section of the federal New Democratic Party. It was formed in October 1961, a few months after the federal party. The ONDP had its...

 and Premier of Ontario

Premier of Ontario

The Premier of Ontario is the first Minister of the Crown for the Canadian province of Ontario. The Premier is appointed as the province's head of government by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and presides over the Executive council, or Cabinet. The Executive Council Act The Premier of Ontario...

 while another son John Rae was a senior advisor to Jean Chrétien

Jean Chrétien

Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien , known commonly as Jean Chrétien is a former Canadian politician who was the 20th Prime Minister of Canada. He served in the position for over ten years, from November 4, 1993 to December 12, 2003....

 and is an executive with Power Corporation. Another son, David Rae died in 1989 of lymphoma

Lymphoma

Lymphoma is a cancer in the lymphatic cells of the immune system. Typically, lymphomas present as a solid tumor of lymphoid cells. Treatment might involve chemotherapy and in some cases radiotherapy and/or bone marrow transplantation, and can be curable depending on the histology, type, and stage...

. He had served as Canadian president of GE Capital. Saul's brother, the late Jackie Rae

Jackie Rae

Jackie Rae, CM DFC was a Canadian singer, songwriter and television performer.He was born John Arthur Rae in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1922. Rae began performing at the age of three with his brother and sister on the vaudeville circuit in Canada...

 was an entertainer and former host of the The Jackie Rae Show on CBC

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

.