Noted documentarian Lindalee Tracey lost her long battle with cancer earlier this month and died at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital just as a long-developing pet project went to camera for CBC.

Tracey passed away on Oct. 19, two days after work began on a pilot for The Border. She was 49.

‘The great tragedy here is she can’t be a part of this now,’ said husband and collaborator Peter Raymont, speaking to Playback earlier in the week. ‘This was very much her baby.’

Tracey was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2001, which – despite chemotherapy, radiation and a mastectomy – spread to her bones, lungs and liver. In January, a tumor was detected in her brain.

She continued working until just three weeks before The Border started filming in Toronto. She was admitted to the palliative care unit at Princess Margaret in late September.

The Border, her first scripted drama, is about Canadian immigration and comes from White Pine Pictures, the production company she shared with Raymont.

The would-be series is rooted in White Pine’s library of doc work, which includes The Undefended Border, a three-parter for TVO, and Invisible Nation, a one-hour exploring the lost voices of Canada’s immigrants. Tracey, also a journalist and nonfiction author, wrote an award-winning story for a 1992 issue of Toronto Life about the difficulties newcomers face when entering this country.

Her award-winning documentaries include work produced under her boutique company, Magnolia Movies, which she launched in 2003 to work on more personal projects. The two-hour The Anatomy of Burlesque mapped out comic eroticism, and came from Tracey’s personal experience working as a dancer at a Montreal strip club in the ’70s.

The Border was commissioned by CBC as an MOW just before Sept. 11, 2001, but was later shelved.

Despite repeated visits to cancer specialists and a trip to Mexico to explore alternative treatments, Tracey devoted herself to the project and continued to pitch to various members of the changing CBC development teams to ensure it would eventually be made.

‘She would just get through a large, arduous meeting with such vitality, and only at the end she barely had enough strength to cross the room,’ says Border scriptwriter Janet McLean.

The project eventually evolved into a series and, last February, Tracey and Raymont were given the long-awaited go-ahead by CBC brass to film one episode as part of the pubcaster’s piloting project. She helped develop character composites, hired scriptwriters McLean and Jeremy Hole, signed up director John Fawcett (Ginger Snaps) and assisted with the casting decisions.

CBC’s creative head of drama, Sally Catto, met Tracey for the first time earlier this year.

‘It did not take long to see that this was a woman with a vibrant spirit, tremendous passion and intellect, and a desire to tell stories that make a difference,’ she recalls. ‘It was an honor to work with her during the development of The Border.’