In 1950, Richardson married Shirley Norton, a woman of Māori descent and the daughter of a trade union activist.
Many of his NFB films were about worker rights and corporate abuse, but he was an avid supporter of Canada's aboriginal peoples, in creating understanding, and seeking justice in their struggles against degradation of their lands.
In his films and books, he created "a chronicle of the assault upon the last coherent hunting culture in North America, the Cree Indians of Quebec, and their vast primeval homelands".
[3][4] He also did prescient work on anti-globalization in the 1987 award-winning NFB documentary Super-Companies, which explored the role of multinational corporations such as Alcan.
In 2002, in recognition of his use of "creativity to draw public attention to social issues and engender compassion through mutual understanding", Richardson was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada.