Every Canadian of my generation knows the line, “I told him, Julie, don’t go!” It was said by Sylvia Lennick, the mother of my dear friend, the great Canadian filmmaker and special-effects expert Michael Lennick. Michael passed away ten years ago today, on November 7, 2014, at just 61 years of age.

He’d been admitted to hospital a month earlier and was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain tumor; he was put into a medically induced coma; he never woke again. His wife and business partner...