The Cohen family had moved to Scotland fleeing the pogroms of the 1890s, and there Goodman met Helen Rae,[3] the daughter of a metal plater[4] in the Glasgow shipyards.
He had two siblings, an older sister, Grace, who went to work as a dancer at the Radio City Music Hall, and a younger brother Jackie who had a long career in Canadian show business.
The two met at a summer school organized by Sir Norman Angell in Geneva, Switzerland, 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.
He later served as Canadian Minister in the United States (Washington DC 1956–1961), and was Canada's Ambassador to the UN in both Geneva and New York (1972-1976) - the latter a role to which his son Bob was appointed in July 2020.