He was one of a quintet of Canadian film-technology pioneers who made the pictures really, really big.
Robert Kerr helped develop the giant-screen, large-format film system that came to be known as Imax and that made a name for itself around the world with its vivid, seven-storey-high images.
Mr. Kerr, 80, when he died last week in Toronto, helped build global reputation of Imax Corp., a Mississauga-based company whose roots go back to the Expo 67 world's fair in Montreal.
He was part of the very first efforts to create a new, immersive film experience for viewers - using a revolutionary process based on the use of giant, 70-millimetre film stock - along with Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor, Bill Shaw and Bill Breukelman.
Mr. Kerr first worked with Mr. Ferguson when they launched a school newspaper at Galt Collegiate Institute. When Mr. Ferguson - who had gone on to become a New York-based independent filmmaker - asked Mr. Kerr to help him produce a film for Expo 67, the latter jumped at the chance. At the time, Mr. Kerr was serving as the mayor of Galt, Ont., and managing the printing company he had sold.
"At that age, you think the world's your oyster," Mr. Kerr once told a reporter. "We had just enough experience to give us some confidence, and if it didn't go, we still could recover. We were very naive, which probably saved us."
For Expo 70 in Osaka, Mr. Kroitor, also experimenting with screen technology, got a project going with funding from film manufacturer Fuji. A new company, the precursor to Imax Corp., was created, with Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Kroitor and Mr. Kerr as key players. They approached Mr. Shaw, who was an engineer at bicycle-maker CCM, to work on the technical aspects.
The first permanent Imax theatre was the Cinesphere, built at Toronto's Ontario Place in 1971.
Mr. Breukelman, a company turnaround specialist who joined the Imax management team as an executive in the early years and later became chairman, recalls meeting Mr. Kerr and others at a demonstration of the projection system at McMaster University.
He remembers Mr. Kerr as "a person of considerable charm. He took the long-term view of things. He was team-oriented. He listened to people in a respectful way," he said.
Mr. Kerr was great acting as a crucial link between the worlds of technology and commerce, said Mr. Breukelman. "He could deal with people at any level, whether electrician or head of state."
Although Mr. Kerr helped make Imax a household name, the company had its share of financial difficulties and he and his partners sold it to U.S. financial interests in the mid-1990s.
Mr. Kerr went on co-found another giant-screen firm, Toronto-based SK Films.