Howard Newns Reed was born in London on April 28, 1914 to Morris and Emmaline Reed. He studied at the London Hospital Medical School and became an optometrist, graduating in 1941. During the Second World War, medical practitioners were being called up to utilize their skills as part of the armed forces. Reed opted to join the Colonial Medical Service in Africa where he was stationed in Tanzania until returning to England in 1946. Shortly afterwards, Reed moved to Winnipeg to open an optometry clinic. Though the collection of spiritual science material in his Winnipeg home would become immense, it wasn’t until 1963 that Reed came into contact with Spiritualism. Shortly after his mother’s death, Mary Wright, a medium who was married to Reed’s father’s cousin, contacted Reed and told him that she had experienced a vision of his mother, who instructed her to write to Howard and say how sorry she was that in life she did not know of Spiritualist communication with the departed. Reed became intrigued, but it wasn’t until 1970, on a trip back to England, that Reed decided to attend a Spiritualist sitting. This, in turn, led to his attendance at a Spiritualist church service which impressed Reed and stoked both his spiritual and scientific curiosity, leading to more and more research and dabbling. Before his death in 2010, Reed collected approximately 3,000 books related to spiritual science, many of which were donated to the Survival Research Institute of Canada (SRIC) between 2000 and 2006.