[1] Gray was born to Abraham and Sara Gur-Arie, a Jewish family in Gomel (now in Belarus), and received a high school education in that region.
Gray topped the CCF list on the first count, with 3,086 votes (ahead of party leader Seymour Farmer), finishing in eighth place overall.
Gray and Farmer were subsequently elected on transfers, although longtime Independent Labour Party/CCF Member of the Legislative Assembly John Queen was defeated.
The party had joined an all-party coalition government the previous year, with Farmer serving as Minister of Labour under Liberal-Progressive Premier John Bracken.
The CCF performed much more strongly in the 1945 general election, winning four seats in Winnipeg: Farmer (who topped the poll), Gray (who finished sixth), Lloyd Stinson and Donovan Swailes.
[1] He faced a slightly more serious challenge from the Progressive Conservatives in the 1959 election (in which PC leader Dufferin Roblin won an historic majority), but still defeated his leading opponent by over 1,500 votes.
His appeals for supplementary aid for old-age pensioners were turned down fourteen years in a row by the governments of Stuart Garson and Douglas L. Campbell.