Kenneth Heeley-Ray

Kenneth Heeley-Ray was a British-Canadian film sound editor, most noted as a Canadian Film Award and Genie Award winner for Best Overall Sound and Best Sound Editing.
Born and raised in Macclesfield, Cheshire, he began his career in British film before moving to Canada in 1952 to work for the National Film Board of Canada; initially a short-term contract, he remained with the agency for 12 years before beginning to work for commercial film studios in the 1960s. He was also an occasional producer, winning a CFA in 1966 as coproducer with his wife Ann of the short educational film The Scribe.
After his retirement from the film industry in the early 1990s, his colleagues began to organize a campaign to have the Genie Awards honour him with a lifetime achievement award. Their efforts quickly garnered enthusiastic support from Canadian and international industry figures including Oliver Stone, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Daniel Petrie, Christopher Chapman, Bob Clark, Harold Greenberg and Garth Drabinsky, all of whom wrote letters of tribute praising Heeley-Ray's dedication, professionalism and willingness to mentor younger colleagues entering the industry, to the point that even Genie publicist Maria Topalovich was moved to tears reading them. He received the lifetime achievement award at the 14th Genie Awards in 1993.
He died in 2006 on Saltspring Island, British Columbia.