Past Events - September 23-24 1999 (updated Feb 18 2009)

Lionel Raymond (Ray) Silver, a reporter for McGraw-Hill's energy publications, addressed the CNS Manitoba branch on The Hiroshima Complex, and later the University of Manitoba Physics and Astronomy Department .   For a review of Ray's recent talk to the Chalk River branch of the CNS, click here.

Biography of L. Ray Silver

Mr. Silver was born in Montreal in 1917.   He was a newspaper reporter with the Windsor Star, Toronto Daily Star and the Globe & Mail pre-war.   Determined to be "a participant in the biggest story of my life", Silver joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a navigator and bombardier in World War II.   Shot down over Holland, he was a prisoner-of-war.   He has recounted his "wartime derring-do" in The Last of the Gladiators (Airlife/Vanwell 1995).

Post-war he edited and published The Etobicoke Press, then was public relations manager for J. Walter Thompson Company in Canada.   He had his own P.R. firm for a quarter century; edited Canadian Atomic Newsletter and Journal of the College of General Practice; wrote articles for Maclean's and business publications.

From 1978 he was a member of the Ontario legislative press gallery for McGraw-Hill energy publications.   When Soviet nuclear engineers explained the Chernobyl accident to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 1986, Silver reported the post-mortem sessions for Canadian Press then wrote Fallout from Chernobyl (Doneau 1987).   He wrote about Canadian nuclear science, industry and technology since 1952.

Ray passed away on April 14th, 2001.

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