(Not mentioned on Norway's Honour Roll, but is listed on Frankland's, Central Tech's and on Danforth Tech's 2023 additional Honour Roll plaque.)

William Lay, Ronald's father, was born in the Clapham neighbourhood of London, England in 1863. He married his first wife in 1882 and they had five children. The family lived in the Tottenham suburb and William worked as a fine art dealer. William's wife died in 1917. He had lost a daughter to illness and his youngest son, 19 year old Robert Louis William Lay was killed in the First World War in 1918, fighting in Egypt. William's surviving children were adults when he married Londoner Edith May Johnson in September 1919. He was 56 and she was 21 or 22 years old and they continued to live in William's house in Tottenham where Ronald was born on August 17, 1920.

Three years later, on August 13, 1923, William died. He left his estate to Edith, which amounted to £593, approximately $75,000 in 2023's money. Edith and Ronald moved to Toronto soon after and Edith found work as a saleslady in Eaton's department store. She met Thomas Albert Bowman, a clerk with the Brewer's Warehouse. He had come to Canada from England before the First World War and had served with the Canadian army in France. He and Edith married in July 1927 in Oakville, where Thomas' sister lived. Thomas raised Ronald as his son.

The family moved practically every year, living in Toronto's east end. Ronald likely attended Secord, Frankland, Earl Grey and Morse Street schools. Such a nomadic existence would have made it difficult for Ronald to have had many friends. He took Grade 8 at Norway in 1935/36 as the family then lived at 173 Golfview Avenue. Ronald spent two years at Danforth Tech, living on Donlands Avenue but in 1938 he left school and the family moved to the Bloor and Ossington neighbourhood. Ronald took a year of night school courses at Central Tech. He had been a member of his school's cadets.

When he left school in 1939, Ronald worked as a moulder at Neilson's candy and ice cream factory on Gladstone Avenue. After a year, he moved to Hamilton to apprentice as a general draftsman at the Otis-Fensom elevator company which was doing government ordnance work during the war. On his RCAF attestation papers, Ronald used John R. Lay as a reference. He was also a draftsman at Otis-Fensom and most likely was a Lay cousin, eight years older than Ronald.

Ronald stood 5' 9” and he had hazel eyes and light brown hair. Although he was wiry, he wasn't much for sports, but played tennis occasionally and he knew how to swim and skate. He liked woodworking and could handle a rifle. He also attended church.

When he enlisted in the RCAF on November 10, 1942, the recruiters believed he looked younger than his 22 years. They described Ronald as having a “steady confident manner, well-organized and assertive.” They felt he was “frank, sincere and conscientious.” He did his basic training in Toronto at the Exhibition grounds, graduating in February 1943 to pre-aircrew courses at Queen's University in Kingston, to brush up on high school subjects like Math. Unlike most RCAF recruits, he didn't want to be a pilot, but some other position on an aircrew instead. He achieved his highest mark in Signals at Queen's and immediately joined the No. 2 Wireless School in Calgary. Ronald was being streamed to be a wireless operator. The classroom courses were taken at what is now The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and the entire program took 24 weeks. The classes included wireless radio communications, Morse code and signalling with lights and flags. Practical classes in a trainer plane were conducted at several airfields sprinkled around the Calgary area. Ronald was promoted to Leading Aircraftsman on May 5.