In 1940 when he was twenty, while walking down the street in Montreal Gordon spotted an advertisement for radio operators for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

[3] Gordon penned a column called "It's Magic" for Starship, the children's page of the Toronto Star, in which he explained the secrets of stage tricks.

According to his wife Zita, Gordon fell in love with the "art and psychology" of magic, and found it relaxing.

[3] In the 1970s, Gordon and his wife were booked as a magician act for the Holland America Lines cruise ships,[6] he said of this time '"It proved to be very successful, particularly when sailing through the Bermuda Triangle"' especially when he was able to do lectures on debunking pseudoscience.

[2] Upon Gordon's death, a broken wand ceremony was carried out by Ron Guttman, past president of the Sid Lorraine Hat and Rabbit Club, the Toronto branch of the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM).

The club had awarded Henry an Order of Merlin, which recognizes a member's service of over twenty-five years to IBM.

[2] Gordon had been interested in claims of the paranormal since the late 1940s and read every book he could find on ghosts, ESP, UFO's and astrology.

Gordon wasn't so sure about UFO's and thought maybe there was some possibility they existed, but then in 1952 he read Martin Gardner's book In the Name of Science later to be published as Fads and Fallacies.

His first experience speaking as a debunker on mainstream media was an interview on the evening news for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on November 1, 1960.

Finally in 1969, the media was beginning to become very interested in the paranormal which meant Gordon was receiving more appearances, he was interviewed on the CBC show The Occult and in 1975, on the CTV network for Canada AM.

[6] Gordon says that up until 1978 he felt like the lone skeptic, he was unaware of other like-minded people who shared his passion for debunking the paranormal.

He was also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and was well known for his debunking of the claims of self-proclaimed psychics such as Peter Hurkos[7] Gordon also participated as a debunker on numerous radio and television shows in both Canada and the United States, including The Great Debate, People Are Talking, Larry King Live and The Oprah Winfrey Show, and taught a course called "An Objective Inquiry into Psychic Phenomena" at McGill University from 1979 to 1981.

[6] According to the Toronto Star editor, Gerry Hall, "Henry turned his critical eye to everything from UFO sightings to psychic detectives and chiropractors".

[2] Many of Gordon's columns were published in his book Extrasensory Deception: ESP, Psychics, Shirley MacLaine, Ghosts, UFOs (Macmillan of Canada, 1988).

He understood the need to want to believe in the paranormal, felt that people had a strong desire to want to think that there is something after death.

"... as long as there is doubt, people will believe the books, call the 900 numbers and watch the television specials".

As Gordon describes it in the book Skeptical Odysseys, Geller was doing his moving the compass needle act.

At the end of the show Barrie revealed that Elchonen was actually '"Henry Gordon, our well-known Montreal magician, who makes the point that you can all be taken in by this type of fakery"'.

[6] On the CBC show As It Happens, Gordon told the story of how he visited a Ottawa psychic named Ian Bortz who was charging $75 an hour.

Gordon asked Bortz to help him find his dead sister, '"It took him all of 15 seconds to make contact.

Gordon, (still in character as a psychic) proceeded to tell the host very personal information, "one of his eyes had been affected because he had been a forceps delivery when born".

He claimed that he needed conceal his real identity because his testing had been done under "strict secrecy" and he had to '"protect my reputation as a scientist"'.

[3] The theatre received a lot of interview requests from the media, but they knew Gordon would be recognized so they were all turned down.

The theatre claimed that Elchonen had been tested in by University parapsychology labs in America and Europe and this would be his first stage performance.

When over a third of the audience raised their hands, Gordon said '"Hundreds of thousands of people are being taken in by fakes - that's why I pulled this hoax ...

Once he had gathered all this research he wrote to Paul Kurtz who ran Prometheus Books and in 1988 was able to publish Channeling into the New Age: The "Teachings" of Shirley MacLaine and Other Such Gurus.

According to his obituary, Gordon was a "Royal Canadian Air Force Veteran and radio instructor for the British Commonwealth".

[3] In 1988, Gordon was asked about his religious beliefs, and stated that he is Jewish but non-practicing: "I believe in upholding the ethical values of Judaism".