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       Filmmaker Mort Ransen working on National Film Board of Canada documentary, Christopher’s Movie Matinee in 1968.

       National Film Board of Canada

       Independent filmmaker Mort Ransen reached the zenith of his cinematic career with Margaret’s Museum, a 1995 feature film that he co-wrote and directed. The British/Canadian co-production won six Genie Awards plus a nomination for best picture with an additional nod to Mr. Ransen and his co-writer, Gerald Drexler, for best screenplay.

       Set in a coal mining town in Nova Scotia during the 1940s, the movie stars Kate Nelligan and Helena Bonham Carter as a mother and daughter living with the daily fear of loved ones being killed or injured. Sweetly romantic, yet darkly disturbing, the film garnered three-and-a-half stars out of four from renowned critic Roger Ebert. Mr. Ebert wrote, “Margaret’s Museum is one of those small, nearly perfect movies that you know, on seeing it, is absolutely one of a kind.”

       Coming from a theatre background, Mr. Ransen learned the essentials of filmmaking at the National Film Board (NFB). There, he was free to experiment, occasionally putting cameras into the hands of others if he felt the story was theirs to document, rather than his to tell. Fifteen of his 17 NFB films, including one on legendary Manitoba Theatre Centre co-founder John Hirsch, received international awards. While intense focus on a task could sometimes make Mr. Ransen appear absentminded, he was somewhat of a creative chameleon with a knack for capturing the zeitgeist.

       On Sept. 4, aged 88, with his body and cognitive functions in decline, Mr. Ransen chose medical assistance in dying (MAID) over an existence in which he could no longer be what he’d always been: a teller of stories.

       “He felt strongly about being in charge of his ending,” said Libby Mason, a theatre director and Mr. Ransen’s partner for the past 21 years. Prior to his relationship with Ms. Mason, Mr. Ransen had married twice and was a father of four.

       His grown children and their partners, along with a few close friends, were with him at the Lady Minto/Gulf Islands Hospital on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia when he died.

       “Once he’d made the decision, and informed those dear to him, he seemed lighter, happier. He wanted those people to be present as a witness to the end because he saw himself as an advocate for MAID,” Ms. Mason said. “He was grateful it was available as an option to suffering.”

       Mr. Ransen was born Moishe Socoransky on Aug. 16, 1933, in Montreal to immigrants from the Ukraine. He was the youngest of four children in the Yiddish-speaking household of Shimmel and Fanny (née Bordoff) Socoransky. Mr. Socoransky was highly regarded in his community as a scholar and political expert even though he rejected Judaism and became a communist.

       Mort was not a keen student at Montreal’s Baron Byng High School but he did pay attention to an English teacher who suggested he pursue a career in acting. He left school after Grade 9 and worked at assorted jobs before training as a method actor with Peggy Feury, a highly regarded teacher in New York.

       In 1961, while Mr. Ransen was earning a living by acting and directing in Montreal theatre, he was approached by someone from the NFB and offered a job. In a segment for an NFB retrospective titled Making Movie History, Mr. Ransen said he knew nothing about film but received extraordinary training at the agency as an assistant director and assistant editor. The films used for teaching were military training films, something he found hilarious because he said, “I was an avowed pacifist.”

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       As soon as he had acquired sufficient skills he was allowed to make short films of his own. One, titled No Reason to Stay, dealt with leaving school and was the first of his films to stir up trouble for the NFB: It was widely interpreted as a government agency recommending that kids drop out. “It was not about that at all,” Mr. Ransen said. “It was to point out there was a lot about schools, at the time, that needed changing.”

       As the sixties progressed, the NFB felt the emerging “peace, love and protest” hippie culture in Toronto’s Yorkville area should be documented. Mr. Ransen arranged for the Kodak company to supply 50 cameras to students and, in the spirit of democracy, let them decide what to film.

       Mr. Ransen found their process of decision-making fascinating and hired an NFB crew to record it. The result was Christopher’s Movie Matinee (1968), a 90-minute film-within-a-film that combined professional with amateur footage.

       It, too, caused embarrassment for the NFB when CBC Television reported that 60 young people had been arrested at sit-ins in Toronto and that police were investigating a possible link between hippie activity and the presence of an NFB crew. The implication was that the crew might have incited participants into resisting arrest for filming purposes.

       The Globe and Mail went even further with a decisive front-page headline: “Film Board’s Role in Hippie Happenings is Revealed.” Mr. Ransen included these reports in the film. He says, on camera, “I’ve been ordered to pack up and get out of town.” A skeptical teenaged participant asks, “Do you think you’ll be able to make a film out of it?” The ending shot is Mr. Ransen’s response: “I don’t know.”

       Mr. Ransen left the NFB in 1984, and made a transition into directing for film and television. After several feature dramas, and an episode of Street Legal, Mr. Ransen came across Sheldon Currie’s novel The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum. Rights were optioned, the title became Margaret’s Museum and Mr. Ransen and Mr. Drexler set about writing a screenplay. Once funding was in place, Mr. Ransen journeyed to Britain to coax Helena Bonham Carter into playing the lead. She liked him enormously. He hung out with her large and rather eccentric family in London, and reportedly flirted with Ms. Carter’s grandmother.

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       Vic Sarin, one of Canada’s top cinematographers of the day, was the eye behind the lens for Margaret’s Museum. He observed that Mr. Ransen was a stubborn man who also understood how to deal with actors when they brought instincts and opinions to their role. “First he gave in to them, then asked for what he needed,” Mr. Sarin said. “He was always confident he could fix things in the edit suite.”

       Despite the success of Margaret’s Museum in North America, the co-production agreement gave the British co-producers the right to edit their own version. “Helena was given a terrible review in Britain because they cut the build-up that explained who she was. She just came across as a mad woman,” Ms. Mason said. “Even today, if you order the movie online, you might get the British version. Mort was incensed by it.”

       After Margaret’s Museum, Mr. Ransen retired from the film business to live as a self-described hippie on Salt Spring Island. He took occasional roles in theatre before coming to public attention again in 2001 with his direction, writing and narration of Ah … The Money, The Money, The Money. It was a feature about a logging war on Salt Spring, a place he liked to call “my island.” Initially, Ms. Mason had been impressed by an invitation to visit before she understood that the island wasn’t actually his personal property.

       While Mr. Ransen received MAID, a physician struggled to fix an unco-operative port that would deliver medication to his vein, and Ms. Mason held his hand. His final words, after the adjustment was made were, “Take two.”

       Ms. Mason leaves Mr. Ransen, along with his children, Chaya, Yoshi, Joshua and Hannah, and four grandchildren.