Sad news indeed, although he wasn't a kid. However, he was one of the last prominent fiddlers who played in what seemed to me a really traditional Gaelic style, certainly a style distinct from those of the other players you hear nowadays (nothing against them, mind you). Interestingly, in some notes that are on-line somewhere, he is quoted as observing that his own style was a departure from what he considered the more traditional playing of the older generation(s) of fiddlers of his youth.

I haven't had a chance to hear it in many years, but his recording of "James Moray of Abercairney" on The Gaelic Tradition in Cape Breton is to my mind an absolute classic of Cape Breton fiddling. For my money, nobody came near him in the playing of slow airs. No, let me qualify that: Dan Joe MacInnis is the only one that came near him, of the fiddlers who were much recorded.