Smiley Raborn, Jr.

 

Smiley Raborn Jr., 88, of Calgary, is an American by birth and a Canadian by choice who had a hand in laying cornerstones of the industry in his adopted country.

 

Born in Louisiana at Robeline, he trained as an engineer, worked for Mobil, served as a wartime army major and ran field operations for a geophysics giant in his native United States.

 

After moving to Calgary in 1950, he led a firm that had a hand in planning, financing and constructing the international natural-gas delivery grid of TransCanada PipeLines, Canadian Delhi Oil.

 

Also building Candel into a substantial production company, he became a Canadian citizen and a figure in Canadian industry associations. He formed an international energy consulting firm in 1980 and stayed active in the field until he retired in 2000.