Gerard Parkes, Beloved Fraggle Rock Actor, Dies at 90

updated 10/21/2014 AT 12:45 PM EDT

•originally published 10/21/2014 AT 12:00 PM EDT

Gerard Parkes, the Dublin-born actor best known for playing the sole human character, Doc, on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock, died on Oct. 19 in his retirement home in Toronto, Canada. He was 90 years old.

Parkes was born in Ireland in 1924, and he moved to Canada after World War II, starting his acting career in theater in 1948. Aside from Fraggle Rock, Parkes also acted in children’s fare like A Muppet Family Christmas and Shining Time Station.

Parkes won best actor at the 1968 Canadian Film Awards for his role as Uncle Matthew in the film Isabel, but it was the role of Doc that “hit a chord with kids and adults,” his agent, Gerry Jordan, told the Canadian Press. “We would get loads of fan mail always asking for his picture,” Jordan noted.

Ironically, Parkes played another character named Doc, a Boston bartender with a penchant for mix-and-match aphorisms and Tourette’s-related profanity, in 1999’s The Boondock Saints, a role he reprised for the film’s sequel 10 years later.