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WALTER GRAY: 81

FORMER GLOBE BUREAU CHIEF JOINED JOE CLARK'S TEAM
By SANDRA MARTIN, The Globe and Mail
July 30, 2008

Toronto -- A former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief and life-long supporter of the Progressive Conservative Party, Walter Gray, died in the Ottawa Civic Hospital on July 28, 2008, after surgery to repair a burst abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was 81.

Born Dec. 7, 1926, in Medicine Hat, he was the youngest of six children. He worked first for The Medicine Hat Gazette as a general reporter, then joined The Albertan in Calgary in 1947. Three years later, he joined Canadian Press, working in the news co-operative's Toronto and Winnipeg bureaus before joining The Globe in 1956. "He really cut his teeth with the Diefenbaker campaign, riding the rails with old-time journalists Charlie King and Val Sears," son Daniel Gray said.

Initially a feature writer for The Globe, he was assigned in October, 1958, to cover Operation Deep Freeze IV in the Antarctic, reporting on scientific research being carried out at the South Pole by a dozen governments. He was attached to the U.S. naval support force at McMurdo Sound, spending two weeks "on the ice." He later wrote about "the unique experience of visiting both the Antarctic and the Arctic within the space of six weeks." He then covered Toronto City Hall and the Ontario legislature before being appointed Ottawa bureau chief in 1960.

Besides politics, he specialized in resource development. After leaving The Globe in 1970, he worked in a number of communications and public-relations positions, including a two-year stint at the Metro Toronto Zoo that ended precipitously when founding director Gunter Voss was fired. He returned to Ottawa in the late 1970s and became director of research in Joe Clark's short-lived Progressive Conservative government.

An accomplished piano player who had a huge repertoire of popular songs from the forties, fifties and sixties, Mr. Gray was playing regularly at three Ottawa retirement homes and making his trademark dill pickles until a week ago. He called the pickles "Joe's dills" because he had been preparing a batch back in 1979 when "he got the word that the party whip had lost count" and the government had been defeated. He was also publishing two newsletters, Ottawa On the Record and Parliamentary Alert. "It really kept him sharp," said his son. Predeceased by his wife Margueretta, he is survived by his children, Daniel and Sharon, and two grandchildren.

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