Ron Weyman died on June 26.

Weyman, born in 1915, was a veteran of the Second World War who left London for Ottawa to become a painter. In Ottawa, he met Sydney Newman of the NFB who encouraged him to pursue filmmaking. Weyman produced documentaries for the NFB from 1946-1953.

In 1954 he began work as a producer and director at the CBC, under Robert Allen, head of television drama (Weyman’s sister, broadcaster, writer and sculptor Rita Allen, is the widow of Robert Allen).

Weyman would go on to produce thousands of hours of television drama over his 26-year career, pioneering programs such as The Serial, which dramatized Canadian novels, and the ground-breaking hit series Wojeck (1966-1968). An impassioned advocate of Canadian drama and Canadian communities of talent, Weyman took aim at the CBC when it failed to renew Wojeck for a third season.

In the 1970s, Weyman contributed to Corwin, and The Manipulators - a made in Vancouver series starring Marc Strange, co-creator of the Beachcombers. In this weekend’s Globe, Sandra Martin said of Weyman that he was responsible for taking directors “out of the studio and into the streets so that they could use real locations in home-grown stories that reflected contemporary social issues” - no doubt we can observe a direct line between Weyman’s daring and later CBC dramas such as Sidestreet, Da Vinci’s Inquest & City Hall and Intelligence.

Hat tip to Anu.

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	Drama, Obits