Vale Michael Anthony “Mike” Boland, an Emmy- and Gemini Award–winning cinematographer who accrued dozens of credits across documentary TV series and films over the course of a 40-year career, has died at the age of 75.

The news was announced in a social media post on Oct. 5 by Boland’s daughter, Tarryn Gillies, who said that her father died peacefully in St. Joseph’s Medical Centre in Toronto.

Prior to entering the film and television industry in the late 1970s, the Montreal-born Boland spent nearly a decade as a professional hockey player, primarily in the American Hockey League. After breaking into the NHL to play two games with the Philadelphia Flyers, he went on to become the second Canadian to play professionally in Finland before wrapping up his career with a stint as a coach in Australia.

Boland made his entrée into the screen industry during his time in Australia, when he secured a post as an apprentice camera operator for a local Melbourne TV station to pay the bills. “I was nervous as hell because I didn’t want to make a mistake,” Boland told University of Toronto Magazine in a 2013 interview. “It was my first big chance. I was hooked from the first time I filmed.”

Following his return to Canada in the 1980s, Boland drew on his past career on the ice for two of his most notable credits: The Boys on the Bus, the 1987 feature doc on the Stanley Cup-winning 1986-87 Edmonton Oilers team, which was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame; and the six-part 1990 CBC documentary series Ken Dryden’s Home Game, in which the legendary Montreal Canadiens goaltender explores hockey’s contributions to Canadian society and culture.

In 1992, Boland notched another major accomplishment with his work on the landmark 1992 docuseries Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World for Canada’s Global Television Network, PBS and the BBC. Ten years in the making, the series earned Boland and his collaborator Vic Sarin a Primetime Emmy Award and a Gemini Award for outstanding cinematography.

Other credits from Boland’s wide-ranging body of work include the CBC docuseries The Struggle for Democracy, the History Channel’s War Story, episodes for CBC’s The Nature of Things and numerous one-off documentaries, including The Al Qaeda Code, The Climb, Sarah McLachlan: A Life of Music and Niagara: A History of the Falls.

In 2012, Boland added “author” to his resume when he published Through the Lens of My Eye: Life as a Documentary Cameraman, a memoir about his globetrotting career behind the camera.

In a lengthy tribute on Facebook, Mark Johnston, the founder of Toronto-based Nomad Films and a frequent collaborator of Boland’s, remembered him as “a true artist of the highest order … [whose] ruggedness (including a ten-times broken nose) hid the artist from many observers.”

“Mike and I made more than 30 documentary films/programs together for broadcasters around the world. He taught me how to make films. He was my big brother,” Johnston said. “His lessons are endless, and I will always draw on them.”

Boland is survived by his daughter Tarryn, his granddaughter Amber, and his sister Barbara.

Photo courtesy of Mark Johnston