Obituary of C. Mary Young

It is with immense sadness that we report the death of CECILIA MARY YOUNG at home on July 31, 2025. Mary, the daughter of Arthur W. and Alice J. (Sharp) Harrison was born at Wellington, Somerset, England, on June 17, 1923.

Mary grew up in Wellington and Blue Anchor, Somerset, and attended school in Wellington, Taunton, and Minehead. She particularly loved living on the coast at Blue Anchor, where she would walk over the hills with her older brothers, learning the names of all the plants she saw there. Mary carried out research on agricultural crop pests in Wiltshire and Dorset during the Second World War, then completed a degree in zoology and botany at the University of Bristol. An opportunity at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine took her to London, where she carried out research and received a Ph.D. from the University of London. Her research on the inheritance of DDT resistance in houseflies has been widely cited, with significant implications for the use of insecticides to reduce diseases such as malaria. She was invited to speak at international conferences and was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, which allowed her

to travel across the United States in the early 1950s, making presentations at universities.

In London she met D. Murray Young, a New Brunswicker who was studying for a Ph.D. in history at Imperial College, and they were married in 1954. They moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where Murray had received a faculty appointment, spending four years there. After one subsequent year in Boston, Mary and Murray then relocated to Fredericton, where Murray had been appointed as a professor at the University of New Brunswick. Fredericton would be their home for the rest of their lives. During the 1960s and 70s Mary was busy bringing up the children, encouraging them in their studies and hobbies; as they graduated from school she returned to her love of biology, and particularly botany. She worked as a lab demonstrator at UNB and volunteered to study and identify plants for the botanical museum, the Connell Memorial Herbarium. Mary made immense contributions to the herbarium, curating, mapping, and cataloguing the collections there.

Mary then became involved in publications, writing articles for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and later publishing Nature’s Bounty: Four Centuries of Plant Exploration in New Brunswick, illustrated with her own artwork and published by UNB Libraries when she was 92! With her deep interest in natural areas and rare species, she helped found the Nature Trust of New Brunswick in the 1980s, and for several years was a leader of that organization. She was thus in the forefront of efforts to identify and protect sensitive areas in the province.

Late in life, Mary received formal recognition for her contributions. UNB gave her an honorary D.Sc. in 2016, and she was the recipient of the 2023 Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Excellence in Land Conservation. For her 100th birthday in 2023, she initiated the Dr. C. Mary Young Scholarship in Biology at UNB, which is granted each year to a biology student interested in the environment, nature, or conservation.

Mary was a tremendously kind and generous person, much beloved by her family. She had many enduring friendships with people of different backgrounds and ages. She loved the countryside and seashore, and was very happy when in her garden or exploring for plants in the wild. She also enjoyed talking to people and was a hospitable host right up to the end of her life. Mary had a life-long love of music, and even at the age of 100 she took pleasure in playing Beethoven and Chopin on her piano. She is survived by her three children, Christopher (Pamela) Young, Graham (Vicki) Young, and Carolyn Young (John Thistle), and by five granddaughters, Gillian and Rachael Young, Erica and Juliana Young (Dylan Bodner), and Fiona Thistle, and by many nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by Murray, who passed away in 2017, and by her parents and her two brothers, John and Peter Harrison.

A private family remembrance of Mary’s life will be held at a later date. For those who wish and in lieu of flowers, donations in Mary’s memory may be made to the “Dr. C. Mary Young Scholarship in Biology” at the University of New Brunswick, or to the Nature Trust of New Brunswick.