Ottawa, April 25 (IANS): Canada's Senate Speaker Pierre Claude Nolin died of cancer at the age of 64, said a Canada Senate spokeswoman on Friday.

The spokeswoman said Nolin died just after 7 p.m. on Thursday, Xinhua reported.

The late speaker was appointed to the Senate in 1993 by then prime minister Brian Mulroney and he had been battling a rare cancer since 2010.

Nolin became speaker in November last year, the unanimous choice of conservative, liberal and independent senators who saw him as a smart, independent-minded man, who could steer the upper house through the final dramatic chapters of the late 2013 expenses scandal that rocked the Senate to its foundations.

His death comes in the wake of of the trial of disgraced Senator Mike Duffy for allegedly filing fraudulent living and travel expense claims. The trials of two other senators, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb, on similar charges, are set to start within months.

When he took over the speaker's chair, Nolin signalled his intention to conduct himself in a non-partisan manner, and devote himself to defending and restoring the reputation of the tarnished upper house.