David Brooks
Although I had met Mr Gray on a couple of occasions when he was an MP, I only got to know him when he was Canadian Secretary of the IJC. I was still at IDRC, and he was interested in the work we were doing on Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian water issues. To be sure, IDRC did not finance the Israeli portion but the water is so interconnected that projects had to be bi- or tri-lateral. Together he and I conceived the idea of adapting the IJC model to the Middle East, and, as a start, working toward 6-month exchanges of personnel between Israeli and Palestinian water officials with Canadian IJC officials. It was a great idea, but the funding for the project would have had to come from CIDA, which did not want to touch it. Alas. I regret that it has taken this condolence note for me to indicate another area where Mr Gray's ideas and thoughts played a role in something that might have become a model for the world.
Somewhat later, after I had retired from IDRC and was working with Friends of the Earth Middle East, Mr Gray was also kind enough to read over the early version of a draft Israeli-Palestinain water agreement that Julie Trottier (another Canadian) and I had prepared. Mr Gray's suggestions made their way into the final draft, but he specifically did not want to be acknowledged.
David Brooks (Ottawa)
Thursday April 24, 2014 at 10:16 am
