Ireal A. (Don) Mayson was a Canadian veteran, engineer, and businessman.
He was born in Toronto, Ontario on January 19th, 1920, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. After finishing high school, Ireal enlisted to serve with the Royal Canadian Artillery in the Second World War, specifically with the Canadian Radar Detachment. He served in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines, where he was involved in instruction, installation, maintenance, and operation of Canadian-designed and built anti-aircraft control and early warning radars. He also helped set up a Canadian Prisoner of War Rehabilitation Centre in Manila in 1945. He was discharged as a Captain, and after the war, he went to the University of Toronto where he would graduate in 1950 a Bachelor of Applied Science, with first class honours in Engineering Physics, Communications option. Ireal married Norah Hamilton on October 1st 1950. Throughout the 1950s he worked for General Electric, working his way up to management by 1957. His only daughter Marla was born in 1959.
In 1968 he was hired by RCA Canada, and in 1970, promoted to be Vice President and General Manager of the Government and Commercial Systems Division based out of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, outside Montréal, Quebec. In this capacity he oversaw negotiations to sell Canadian-designed satellite Earth Stations to several countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Haiti, Ghana, Iran, the Congo, and others, connecting them with the world via Intelsat satellites. Spar Aerospace acquired the division in 1977, and Ireal continued in this capacity with Spar as Vice President of the Government and Commercial Systems Division, and later as Vice President of Business Development. Projects undertaken with Spar included the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System “Canadarm” for NASA, and his career-defining accomplishment, Brasilsat; the $165 million-dollar sale of two satellites to Brazil.
Ireal A. (Don) Mayson of RCA Canada shaking hands with Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan at the opening of the Deh Mandro Satellite Earth Station, March 1974.
His last project was in Nigeria in 1985 before he retiring in 1986. Ireal came down with an illness over the course of 1986-87, and passed away in 1988, aged 68. In Ireal’s eulogy, given by Spar Aerospace President Larry D. Clarke, it was said that “in a real sense, Don was a man-of-the-world…” and “…I owe him much—as does the company I am privileged to lead. In this sense, his legacy is far richer than anything he might have envisioned.”
In Nerja, Spain.