E. Herbert Norman was born in Japan to missionary parents. He was educated by his mother, and then attended the Canadian Academy at Kobe. Ill with tuberculosis in 1926, he returned to Canada where he finished his senior metriculum in Ontario in 1928. He received his B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1933, and then completed a second B.A. in classics in 1935, his M.A. at Harvard in 1937 and his Ph.D. in 1940. Norman joined the External Affairs department and was posted to Tokyo in 1940. He was interned after the Japanese entry into World War II but returned to Canada in 1942. Following World War II Norman served as Canada's highest ranking diplomat in Japan. In 1953 Norman was made High Commissioner to New Zealand and was then sent to Egypt in 1956. Allegations of Norman's communist sympathies led him to commit suicide in 1957.