Brittain also directed the three-part CBC-coproduced series The Champions, chronicling the lives and battles of Canadian political titans René Lévesque and Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
[4] He won the Gemini Award for best screenplay and direction for the 1985 drama Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks.
As NFB producer, Brittain's credits included Arthur Lipsett's A Trip Down Memory Lane.
[5] Often a narrator of his own documentaries, Brittain also lent his voice to the animated mockumentary What on Earth!
In 1990, he was posthumously appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of "his masterful visual records of our social and cultural past.