Brian Paisley, founder of North America’s longest-running Fringe festival, has died

EDMONTON – The founder of North America’s longest-running Fringe theatre festival and a celebrated advocate of storytelling has died.

The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival says Brian Paisley died Thursday in Mexico, where he was spending his retirement, after a long struggle with pneumonia.

Paisley, a screenwriter, author and playwright, launched the festival in Edmonton 45 years ago.

“All hearts are feeling his loss,” said Murray Utas, the festival’s artistic director, in a Tuesday interview.

“There’s 30-plus festivals that are happening today across North America that are directly related to us at Edmonton and the philosophy that was founded by Brian.”

His death comes about a month before the 10-day festival in August. Utas said Edmonton’s theatre community is set to commemorate his life during the event.

“Now that we’ve lost who we lovingly (called) Father Fringe, (the festival) becomes more intentional about looking at what is in the true fabric of this beautiful event that happens every year.”

Born in 1946 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Paisley grew up in Vancouver. Later in Edmonton, working as an artistic director, he was approached by city officials with a request to use leftover funding for something meaningful.

“Then he came up with what he coined as sort of an absurd idea of where anyone can be an artist and we let artists without gatekeepers tell their stories,” Utas said.

“He honestly didn’t think it was going to work.”

Utas said Paisley loved storytelling and was inspired by the work being done by artists with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, known as the largest event of its kind in the world.

“He loved the idea of what stories meant and how they were woven into the journey of who we are,” Utas said.

“(He believed) if we aren’t telling stories, recording our stories or making the stories stay alive, community isn’t as healthy as it could be or thrives in the way that it could.”

The City of Edmonton’s website says 7,500 people attended the very first festival in 1982.

“The Edmonton Fringe Festival has continued to expand, attracting about a half million people to the Old Strathcona area each August,” the city said.

“(It) is now recognized as the largest alternative theatre festival in the world outside of the original Fringe in Edinburgh.”

Paisley received the Order of Canada in 2010.

In 2023, he received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Alberta for his impact on Canada’s arts community.

He’s also a member of Edmonton’s Arts and Culture Hall of Fame.

His passion and the work of those he inspired have kept the festival alive, Utas said, and the Edmonton festival has also been a blueprint for other theatre festivals held across North America.

“He said the audience was so much larger than what he expected (at the first fringe festival) and the bigger surprise is that they’re still here,” Utas said.

“It amazes him that you throw a party and years later it’s still going on and they just won’t go home.”

Utas said Paisley was also a blunt person and didn’t mince words.

“He never stopped being unapologetically himself, and I don’t know that there’s many people in the world that get to say that.”

In a statement, the Edmonton festival said Paisley left an indelible mark on Canadian theatre and art.

“Thank you, Brian, for reminding us that imagination can change a city – and that the most extraordinary stories often begin with one beautifully impossible idea.”

“We’ll carry it forward.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2026.