Rob Young, the Oscar-nominated sound mixer for ‘Unforgiven’, has died at 76

Rob Young, a Canadian sound mixer whose 40-year career in the industry included an Academy Award nomination for his work on Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture winner not forgiven, is dead. He was 76 years old.

Young died June 11 in Albi, France, of complications from a fall in Morocco while on a food tour, his wife, Yvonne Young, announced.

Young has also been nominated for BAFTA awards for not forgiven (1992) and by Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet (1996), for a Cinema Audio Society award for Joe Johnston Jumanji (1995), for a Genie Award for Phillip Borsos’ The gray fox (1983) and for a Golden Reel Award for Bryan Singer’s x2 (2003).

The native of mixed New Brunswick Roxana (1987) and The Russia House (1990) for director Fred Schepisi, the first two First blood films in 1982 and ’85 for Ted Kotcheff and George P. Cosmatos, respectively, and the first two Night at the Museum movies for Shawn Levy in 2006 and ’09 (not to mention The Pink Panther also in ’06).

Young’s impressive resume also included that of Jonathan Kaplan The accused (1988), by Edward Zwick Get out of normality (1992), by Michael Caton-Jones This boy’s life (1993), by Bruce Beresford Double penalty (1999), by John Frankenheimer Reindeer games (2000), by Brian DePalma Mission to Mars (2000), by Sean Penn The oath (2001), by Andy Fickman You are the man (2006), by Antoine Fuqua Shooter (2007) and Chris Columbus Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), his final credit.

He worked mainly out of Vancouver and was the subject of a one-act play called The sound man which premiered in New York in 1999.

After retiring to a village in southern France, Young spent his time reading, listening to music, writing a novel and screenplay, cooking, hiking, fishing and traveling to exotic places, his wife noted.

The eldest of three children, Young was raised in Sussex, New Brunswick. After graduating from St. John’s Technical School, New Brunswick, and working for CN Railways, he enrolled at Ryerson University in Toronto to study Radio & Television Arts.

While attending Ryerson, he worked part-time at Spence-Thomas Productions and traveled extensively for CTV’s investigative news program W5 before moving to Vancouver.

Beginning in documentaries in the early 1970s, Young moved into sound film and television and worked as a boom operator for US feature films. Two of his first films were by Robert Altman Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976) and by Michael Crichton Run away (1984).

Young has also made several telefilms in Canada with director George Schaefer.

Besides his wife—they met in Ryerson and married two days before the age of 53—survivors include his children, Brendan, Michael, and Gillian; sister Kathy; daughters-in-law Jane and Mackenzie; son-in-law Derek; and grandsons Isaac, Sebastian and Wilder.

A celebration of his life will take place on July 23 at 5:30pm at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver. To honor him, his family asks you to perform a random act of kindness.