Bernard Grad (1920-2010) was born February 4, 1920 in Montréal, Québec. He spent his early years living with his mother Raizel (Rosie) and his maternal grandmother until his grandmother’s death in 1932. Grad entered McGill University in 1937 through a scholarship. In January 1941, Grad was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium for almost three years. He returned to McGill University in 1943. He graduated in 1944 and immediately began graduate studies in Biology. By 1949, he achieved his Ph.D. with high honors in Experimental Morphology.

In 1946, he met his future wife Lottie Dainoff. They were married in 1948. They had three children together, Julie Ann, Roland and Willis. Their first child, Julie Ann, died at age four in 1957. Roland was born in 1960 and Willis in 1962. Lottie died in 2016.

Grad had several personal experiences of “bio-energy” during his childhood and young adult life. These experiences sparked his interest in psychology and led to his study with Wilhelm Reich. Soon after obtaining his Ph.D. in 1949, Grad met Reich in Rangeley, Maine. This visit affected Grad strongly and when he returned to Montréal he decided to run his own studies on life energy parallel to his paid research in gerontology at the Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry at McGill University. Grad continued to visit Reich up to, and including, Reich’s trial in 1956.

In 1957, Grad began experiments with the Hungarian healer Oskar Estabany. In 1960, in order to gain funding from the Parapsychology Foundation in New York, Grad was asked to replicate his experiments with Dr. Remi Cadoret of the Department of Physiology at the University of Manitoba and to publish the results. Grad continued his work in healing as well as his work in gerontology for three decades. He became known internationally as a pioneer in healing studies.

Grad retired from McGill University in 1985 and then worked at the Université du Québec with the Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie Research Centre until 1993. After his formal retirement, Grad continued lecturing and research on healing. In the several years before Grad’s death, Deborah Gagne interviewed Grad with the aim of compiling the interviews into a book. In 2015, a limited edition pre-publication proof was circulated among family and friends titled On the Road to Healing and Biogenesis: Memoirs of a Scientist. The book is currently under consideration for publication and broader distribution. Bernard Grad died December 27, 2010 in Montréal.

Subud
Soon after the death of their daughter in 1957, Grad and his wife Lottie learned about Subud, a religion headed by Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo (also known as Bapak). By 1959, they helped open a Montréal Subud chapter. As part of the Subud practice, they later took the spiritual names of Raymond and Renée. Subud was part of their lives until their deaths.