Honourable senators, he was the great-grandson of Canada’s third prime minister, Sir John Abbott. He was a concert pianist, and although he loved his music he loved words more. So he set off to New York City in 1949, and just five years later he made his Broadway debut in The Starcross Story. For him, there would be seven decades of compelling, powerful, poignant portrayals of humanity at its best and worst.

Christopher Plummer was the greatest actor of his time, still doing what he loved until the age of 91, still giving voice and meaning to characters great and small — all this with his wife, Elaine Taylor, his wife of more than 50 years and an actress herself — at his side. She was his best friend, a calm companion and she was with him at the end.

When I served in New York City as Consul General, Chris and Elaine were always willing, witty and wonderful ambassadors for our country, and they always impressed our American friends with the quality and contributions of Canadians. One late evening, after a Stratford Festival production of King Lear at the Lincoln Center — starring Stratford alum Christopher Plummer — he joined us all back at the residence.

As the evening unfolded and after a drink or two, Chris made his way to the piano, sat down and began to play the now-omnipresent soundtrack of the 1965 hit movie The Sound of Music. We gathered around, and it took us a moment to realize he was improvising his own lyrics to those now-ubiquitous tunes. His versions were funny and rude, and evidence that, while the movie truly launched his stellar career, it was a role he detested.

It was the stage that he truly loved, and throughout his life he often returned to it, with a one-man show or a two-hander with Barrymore or Inherit the Wind with Brian Dennehy. He played Cyrano, Iago, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. On screens large and small, he played lovers and villains, spies and heartless billionaires. He is one of the few — certainly the only — Canadian to ever win the triple crown of acting: an Academy Award, an Emmy and a Tony. But it took until 2012 for that Oscar win for his role in Beginners.

The irony was not lost upon him. Chris was self-deprecating but had a great ego. He commanded a stage or screen, and always a room, but he never felt his performance was quite good enough. Of course, it always was. He made the impossible seem effortless.

He often joked about choosing his roles if it meant a big paycheque or an exotic shooting location, but that wasn’t true either. He did it for the love of the game.

You are immortalized for those of us in the audience, so go on, Christopher, to command the next stage, as you always have.