I deeply regret to report that longtime Radio Amateurs of Canada and IARU volunteer Ken Pulfer, VE3PU died Sunday. About two months ago, Ken was diagnosed with an advanced and very aggressive cancer. He was 80. His obituary appears in today's Ottawa Citizen http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/ottawacitizen/obituary.aspx?n=james-pul fer&pid=163996474 <http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/ottawacitizen/obituary.aspx?n=james-pu lfer&pid=163996474> . Some of you will remember Ken from his attendance at ARRL Board meetings in July 2000 and July 2001 while he was serving as RAC Vice President. I will always remember him as a brilliant, hardworking and remarkably effective colleague at ITU conferences in Geneva and Istanbul. When Paul Rinaldo, W4RI retired Ken took over from Paul as chairman of the ITU Radiocommunication Sector's Working Party 5A Working Group 1, the "home" of the amateur and amateur-satellite services in the ITU structure. Ken served as an IARU Technical Representative for 15 years, culminating with the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference. While there were many, two highlights of Ken's volunteer career with the IARU stand out in my mind. The first was his extraordinarily patient and dogged effort to secure protections for the amateur and amateur-satellite service at WRC-03, where an allocation for spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs) was created at 432-438 MHz. The story is told in Ken's own words on page 44 of September 2003 QST. The constraints placed on SARs include significant protection for amateur satellites - quite an achievement given that the allocation for amateur satellites at 435-438 MHz is on a non-interference basis. The second was his success in persuading the Canadian administration to give its active support to an amateur MF allocation, which contributed greatly to our achieving the new allocation of 472-479 kHz at WRC-12. Once again, it was Ken's persistence that carried the day. Amateur Radio's strong position in the international telecommunications community has only come about because of the willingness of remarkable people like Ken to contribute their talents and extremely generous portions of their time on our behalf. Their effectiveness sometimes requires that they stay out of the limelight, but they should never be forgotten. Dave Sumner, K1ZZ