In many ways, Emru helped initiate me into Canadian life. He asked me to be a contributor to Frames Per Second Magazine, and gave me the opportunity to get to know Canada through the Toronto International Film Festival. (I later volunteered for the same organization.) On his errand, I visited the offices of the NFB, and saw the same Norman MacLaren shorts that many Canadian children see at school. He inadvertently exposed me to a slice of Canadian culture.
Of course, he did even more for a huge amount of people. He and his sister brought the need for minority registrants to the OneMatch bone marrow and stem cell registry home to Canadians in the arts and technology sector, especially residents of Montreal. He helped explain anime fandom. He gave a lot of people their start at FPS. He was a writer, a husband, and father.
And now he’s gone.