Three days ago, Al Waxman finished shooting his final scenes for an episode of his new television series, Twice in a Lifetime. His heart was giving him trouble but he had postponed the surgery he needed until the filming was done, and he told no one that he was entering hospital the next day for what was billed as routine bypass surgery.
Mr. Waxman's life was filled with glory and approbation, but his death in a Toronto hospital late Wednesday at the age of 65 came with a heavy dose of coincidence.
The plot of that last TV show concerns a man -- in this case, a small-town doctor -- with a heart that may have been faulty but was definitely in the right place.
In other words, a man just like Al Waxman.
Tributes poured in yesterday for the ebullient star of more than a thousand acting performances in a career that spanned nearly 50 years.
"I'm completely devastated," said Sharon Gless, the U.S. actress who co-starred with Mr. Waxman from 1982 to 1988 in the TV series Cagney and Lacey. "He was a wonderful, wonderful man."
"You're only as good as your last job," Mr. Waxman often said. The man many Canadians remember as the King of Kensington had many of them. He was a director, producer and actor in TV, films and theatre, and he was scheduled to make his Shakespearean debut at the Stratford Festival this summer.
He won many awards in his career, but he left his mark on each job.
"Al was a big artist," said Fiona Reid, his co-star on King of Kensington, a CBC television series that ran from 1975 to 1980. "He was large in stature, but he was also a guy with big dreams. He knew what kind of an actor he was, and what he set his sights on, he accomplished it," she said.
"He knew acting, producing and directing he knew how to get to the powers that be in Canada," said Ardon Bess, who from 1975 to 1978 played the role of postman Nestor Best on the show. "I learned things from him . . . he was very ambitious."
By his own admission, he was tortured with self-doubt and packed a volatile temper. But his colleagues saw instead someone who was gracious and caring.
Paul Popowich, a co-star on Twice in a Lifetime, praised Mr. Waxman as a generous teacher.
"I never met a man as passionate about acting until I met Al," Mr. Popowich said. "He was a friend, a mentor and an inspiration to me."
He was a high-octane father, too. At one point, when he was filming in Los Angeles, he flew to Toronto just to help his son Adam with a math problem they couldn't figure out over the phone. (He also leaves a daughter, Tobaron.)
Ms. Gless remembered a time in the mid-1980s when she came down with a virus while in Toronto shooting a film.
Not knowing anybody else in the city, she phoned Mr. Waxman.
"I was really, really sick, and called Al at 3 a.m.," she recalled. "By 4 a.m. he was at my door with a doctor. That's exactly the kind of man Al was."
Born on March 2, 1935, near Kensington Market in downtown Toronto, Albert Samuel Waxman was raised in what was then a crucible of Eastern European and Jewish culture.
Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman mourned his childhoodfriend's death.
"We both grew up in the Kensington Market area, and we viewed the world as very similar," he said. "We both had to fight every inch of the way and we both knew what both sides of the street were," Mr. Lastman said, pledging to erect a plaque in Mr. Waxman's memory in the market area.
A gaggle of Winnipeg expatriates profoundly influenced his career and personal life: his wife of 32 years, writer and cookbook author Sara, and Perry Rosemond and John Hirsch, who would create and direct King of Kensington.
The 111 episodes in which he played lovable shopkeeper Larry King made Mr. Waxman a Canadian icon. He was defiantly proud -- even if a bit surprised -- over the sitcom's success.
In his 1999 autobiography That's What I Am, he wrote that at "the core of King's character was a human condition to which we can all relate: contradiction."
It was a contradiction he embodied: He was both the humble Everyman and a man in search of a legacy of greatness. In Canada, he may have achieved both.
"I was amazed when people on the street would approach me during the first 13 episodes of King in 1975 and say, 'We love your show! Enjoy your visit to Canada!' " he wrote. "It was as though its success meant it couldn't be Canadian. But the concept, situations and content were Canadian. The actors, writers, producers and directors were Canadian."
And so was Mr. Waxman.
He had worked early in his career and enjoyed the sort of success in Hollywood that comes to very few Canadian actors. Yet he resisted moving to Los Angeles.
"I'm here; I'm healthy; I'm happy," he said a decade ago. "I'll never leave Canada. I don't belong in L.A., I belong here."
He was active in a range of charities in his native city and was awarded both the Order of Ontario (in 1996) and the Order of Canada (in 1997). In 1999 he was awarded the Earle Grey Award for his contribution to Canadian television.
Mr. Waxman returned to the theatre to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman at the Stratford Festival in 1997, and was praised for his subtle performance.
He was scheduled to make his Shakespearean debut this summer as Shylock in the Stratford production of The Merchant of Venice.
Mrs. Waxman said the bypass surgery was successful but that his heart didn't respond the way it should have.
"I was with him and I talked to him and I kissed him and held his hands, and he knew I was there; I'm sure of it," she said.
"I will not forget Al and I don't think all the people who loved him will forget him either."