Jump to the biography. In Honolulu he met an English Presbyterian missionary, Elizabeth Anne Goodwin; he embraced her faith, which was also that of his ancestors, and returned to Toronto. After their marriage in , he became a zealous evangelist, preaching in various parts of Ontario. Henry Norman was influenced by his grandfather whose profession in medicine he chose and by his father whose zest for hard work he shared.
Even as a youngster, he stood out for his wide-ranging curiosity, his great interest in surgery, and his individualistic spirit. In , at the age of 17, he completed his high-school education in Owen Sound. After a spell as a primary-school teacher in the village of Edgeley, north of Toronto, in he enrolled in University College, University of Toronto, where he studied physiology and biochemistry.
Two years later, he was engaged at a lumber camp near Whitefish Sudbury as a worker-teacher for the Reading Camp Association which was to become Frontier College [ see Alfred Fitzpatrick ].
In the fall of Bethune returned to the University of Toronto, entering the faculty of medicine. The calm of his university life was rudely interrupted in the summer of by the outbreak of World War I. In February he went to France as a stretcher bearer. In April, during the second battle of Ypres, he was wounded in his left leg by a shrapnel shell that exploded nearby. He was taken to a hospital in England and then, in October, repatriated to Canada. Resuming his studies at the University of Toronto, he graduated with an mb in December In April he went back to England and the war, first as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Canadian Volunteer Reserve, and then in the Royal Navy aboard the seaplane carrier Pegasus.
Following his demobilization at the end of hostilities, Bethune planned to specialize in pediatrics. Upon his return to Canada in , he re-enlisted in the army and served for several months as a lieutenant on the medical staff of the Canadian Air Force.
