R ock Demers, an award-winning producer, executive and avid lover of Canadian cinema, died Monday in Montreal at the age of 87.

Demers crafted more than 35 family-oriented films (two in the last seven years) intended for youth-skewing audiences that centered around the challenges young people face.

Over the years, 13 of his films have won more than 100 awards, and garnered nominations from around the world. The Tadpole and the Whale (1989) won a Golden Reel and earned nearly $2 million dollars in Canada alone. Demers also claimed an international Emmy for his 1990 children’s special Vincent and Me (Vincent et moi).

The visionary received many honours during his life, including the Albert Tessier Prize, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and was awarded as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991. The BANFF World Media Festival recognized Demers with a Special Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

Demers was also the long-time president of Harold Greenberg Fund’s French-language committee, a role he stepped down from in 2013. That same year, he was inducted into Playback‘s Hall of Fame, and later sat on the jury selecting annual TV and film honourees.

Born in rural Quebec on Dec. 11, 1933, he began his work in the film industry in 1960 for Montréal’s International Festival of Film, which he managed until 1967. In 1977, Demers became president and later director general of the Institut Québécois du Cinéma. After leaving that position he founded Les productions la Fête in 1980 and produced the film, La guerre des tuques (The Dog Who Stopped the War), which won the Golden Reel Award at the Genies for being Canada’s highest-grossing film at the domestic box office.

Launching Les productions la Fête allowed Demers to continue to produce family focused films under the Contes pour tous (Tales for All)  series, with most of the storylines of this series featuring ordinary Quebec children setting off to solve mysteries or go on adventures.

In an interview with Playback in 2013, Demers vividly recalls what inspired him to create his Tales for All back in the mid-’80s. “I read an article … about the high number of kids that commit suicide. I said to myself, ‘what can I do?’ I know life is difficult, but it’s so worthwhile. After that article, which was a shock for me, I took six months to develop the concept of Tales for All.”