The Nova Scotian who was the driving force behind the modernization of the province's emergency health system has died of cancer. Dr. Ron Stewart was 82 years old.

The son of a Cape Breton coal miner, Stewart worked in health care for more than 50 years in Canada and the U.S., serving as Nova Scotia's health minister and working with Dalhousie University's medical school as a teacher, researcher and mentor.

"Ron is widely regarded as the grandfather of paramedicine in the world," said his friend …