Bill Glassco, a tireless champion of Canada's theatre artists and co-founder of Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and what would become CanStage, died Monday following a lengthy battle with throat cancer. He was 69.

A major figure in the "second wave" of Canadian theatre in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Glassco helped foster the Canadian dramatic tradition at a time when it was still rare for English Canadian playwrights to produce new works.

"He was a classic gentleman," director Chris Abraham said of Glassco. In 1999, the two co-founded the Montreal Young Company, a theatre troupe that employs new graduates from professional theatre schools across Canada.

"He was very curious about what the new generation of directors and writers were doing," Abraham said in an interview, adding that Glassco did most of the fundraising for the new company himself.

Born in 1935 to an English-speaking family in Quebec City, Glassco studied at Princeton and Oxford and taught English at the University of Toronto. He moved to New York to study acting and directing and returned to Canada in 1969.

In 1970, Glassco and his then-wife Jane founded Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, where he began his tenure as artistic director with a production of David Freeman's Creeps.

After stepping down in 1982, he joined the CentreStage theatre company as artistic director. In 1988, Glassco's troupe merged with the Toronto Free Theatre to become CanStage, the country's largest contemporary theatre company.

Glassco helped nurtured English Canadian playwrights like David French, John Murrell, Judith Thompson, and James Reaney. He also introduced English Canada to the plays of Quebec writer Michel Tremblay, first as a translator and then director of Tremblay's works.

In addition to his time at the Tarragon and CanStage, Glassco also directed productions at the Stratford and Shaw festivals, as well as on Broadway.

An officer of the Order of Canada and Dora Mavor Moore Award-winner, Glassco also held an honorary doctor of letters from the University of Toronto.