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No one will dispute this: Harry Gulkin lived a life, and then some.

“Actually, he lived many lives,” Cathy Gulkin noted in assessing the life of her father.

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Legendary Montreal filmmaker Harry Gulkin died Monday morning at the age of 90, following a brief bout with pneumonia. Gulkin, an Albert Einstein doppelgänger with a flowing mass of white curls and an ever-present impish grin, was an unforgettable character.

His loss is a major blow to the anglo cultural scene, coming quickly on the heels of the death of producer/writer Kevin Tierney two months back. Like Tierney, Gulkin was a bridge-builder, respected as much among francos as anglos.

Although he served as president and chair of the Canadian Film Institute and vice-president of the Cinémathèque québécoise, Gulkin was probably best known for producing the iconic Montreal-made film Lies My Father Told Me (1975), based on the Ted Allan novella. Focusing on the heartwarming bond between a seven-year-old boy and his eccentric grandfather, the film was hailed as a Canadian classic. It won six Canadian Film Awards (now Genies) and is the only Canadian production to win the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film.

Gulkin also produced the Montreal-set films Two Solitudes (1978), an adaptation of Hugh MacLennan’s bestselling novel, and Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1978), an adaptation of the famed Mordecai Richler children’s fantasy.

In 2008, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television presented Gulkin a special Genie Award as “a person of outstanding vision and merit, who has built through his love of film a stronger and more vibrant film community.”

Apart from his son, Jim, and daughter Cathy, Gulkin was also the father of Canadian filmmaker/actress Sarah Polley — as was revealed in the latter’s 2012 documentary, Stories We Tell.