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Brian McPherson, an Edmonton-based reality TV star, athlete and disability advocate, has died at the age of 47.
McPherson was known best for his breakout role in the CBC TV show Push, which follows a group of friends in Edmonton navigating their lives in wheelchairs.
He was also a former World Cup winning para-bobsledder and a nationally ranked sledge hockey player.
On Nov. 12, McPherson died by Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), after battling several health complications.
Bean Gill met McPherson in 2013 when she was looking to make friends with more people who used wheelchairs. She was one of his co-stars on Push when it launched in 2023.
Gill says he was a fierce advocate for the disabled community in Edmonton.
“He’s very, very loud. He’s got a very big boisterous voice. He just always has been, like, the life of the party. I nicknamed him ‘Crazy Brian’ because he just did so many crazy things and had such a big love for life,” she said.
“His work history shows that he’s done … most able-bodied jobs that, you know, most people with disabilities would never even consider trying.”
At one point, he even figured out how to ride an e-scooter around the city, she said.
That willingness to try anything was what inspired her and many other people in the community, she said.
McPherson was vocal about his support for the disabled community. In their free time, Gill said they sought a little vigilante justice.
“The accessible parking thing is like the bane of his existence, and people illegally parking in our parking stalls,” she said. “So we just started parking behind people and just boxing them in.”
Spinal injury at 19
His mother, Judy McPherson said he never let anything get in the way.
In 1995, when he was about 19, he suffered a serious spinal injury. Judy McPherson said her son had to re-learn how to get around on a wheelchair but she said he never let that get him down.
“He was a challenge from the moment he was born … sometimes he was a royal pain,” she said.
But underneath his braggadocious personality, McPherson said her son was also kind and sensitive.
“He was a fierce friend,” she said.
“Brian was always there to a fault, in the sense that he would do things that probably physically was hurting himself, but was going to make sure that whoever was in need, he was going to help them.”
Sports became a huge part of his life. He excelled at wheelchair basketball and sledge hockey, including as a member of the Canadian National Sledge Hockey team. He was also one of the first athletes to compete in adaptive bobsleigh.
According to the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, he finished fourth at the second-ever Para Sport World Cup, held in 2015 in Innsbruck, Austria; celebrated a World Cup win in 2016 in Park City, Utah; and competed in the Para Sport World Championships in 2017.
Judy McPherson said her son had been suffering from health complications after several failed procedures, when he decided to apply for MAID in September 2024.
“Over the last five years he was, his body was shutting down. He was trying as hard as possible to be who he was,” Judy McPherson said.
“He came to the house and he explained to his dad, annoyed that he was running out of steam. As his mom and dad, you could see that things were getting worse and worse.
“But I have to be very honest, it was the most peaceful way for him to go to sleep.”
She said she hopes that people will remember him for all the things he was able to accomplish while he was alive.
“He had an absolutely incredible way to treat people like a person, not by how they acted in a sense of physical challenge or mental challenge,” she said. “I wish there had been more people that could inspire people the way he did.”
Judy McPherson said for now, she’s keeping her son’s ashes in her house on a credenza. Come spring, she plans to sprinkle them on a farm at one of his favourite spots.
Friends and community members gathered in Edmonton on Friday to celebrate Brian McPherson’s work for those living with disabilities.
