DOUGLAS, George, Canadian clergyman, born at Ashkirk, Roxburghshire, Scotland, in October 1825. In 1832 the family removed to Canada, and made their home in Montreal. After being apprenticed to a blacksmith, attending a private school, and serving in a bookstore, he entered into partnership with his brother, a carpenter and builder. He had become an insatiable reader, possessing a natural gift of eloquence and a polished diction unusual for his age, and enrolled himself as a student of medicine. Uniting with the Methodist Church, he became a class leader, a local preacher, and a probationer for the ministry, and in 1849 went to England to attend the Wesleyan theological College, but was at once sent as a missionary to the Bahamas. After his ordination in 1850, he was ordered to the Bermuda Islands, residing there eighteen months, until feeble health compelled him to resign, after which he returned to Canada and was engaged eleven years in the pulpit, and seven as the president of the Wesleyan College in Montreal. As a minister he was stationed three years in each of the cities, Kingston, Toronto, and Hamilton. The disadvantages of his youth made him a student through life, and he has given special attention to literature, philosophy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics. He is one of the first orators of his Church in Canada. In 1869 the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by McGill University.