Canadian theatre festival founder in Mexican ICU as family seeks help with costs

Brian Paisley is shown in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Erinne Paisley (Mandatory Credit)

The family of a Canadian theatre producer who helped establish fringe festivals across the country is appealing for financial help as he recovers from pneumonia in a Mexican hospital.

Erinne Paisley says her father, Brian Paisley, 79, was in Puerto Escondido earlier this month mentoring writers when he began suffering from a sore back.

Paisley says her dad initially sought help from someone who wasn’t actually a doctor, and by the time he got to a hospital he was in bad shape.

For over a week, he’s been in an induced coma in an intensive care unit with a breathing tube down his throat.

“His gardener found him in his house and saved his life, and carried him like a baby to the hospital,” Erinne Paisley said in a phone interview Friday from Puerto Escondido, a coastal community about 250 kilometres southeast of Mexico City.

“He was apparently less than one hour from death.”

Brian Paisley founded the Edmonton Fringe Festival in 1982, which the city says is now recognized as the largest alternative theatre festival in the world outside of the original Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland.

A biography on the city’s website says that during his nine years as the festival’s producer, he went on to help establish fringe festivals in other cities including Victoria, Vancouver, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal. He eventually left to pursue writing for film and TV, and now resides in Victoria, it says.

Erinne Paisley says her dad didn’t have health insurance, and the ICU costs around $10,000 a day. He lacks the funds to cover it, she says, and the costs quickly exceeded the resources of his friends and family.

She says she was studying in Denmark when she got a phone call that her father was in hospital, and she arrived in Mexico to be with him earlier this week.

The family has started a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign, which Paisley says is allowing her father to remain in the ICU as he comes out of the induced coma.

“Thirty-six hours ago he was crying and trying to open his eyes. He’s not speaking yet -- he still has this tube down his throat,” Paisley says, adding that he has been getting stronger.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1946, Paisley grew up in Vancouver. He has received numerous awards for his contribution to theatre including the Confederation of Canada medal in 1993, the Order of Canada in 2010 and an honorary PhD from Athabasca University.

His Order of Canada biography also notes he is the founder of the theatre department at Northern Lights College and co-founder of the Chinook Touring Theatre for young audiences.

Paisley says the prognosis for her father appears good.

“Every other single part of him was incredibly strong and healthy,” she says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2026.

Rob Drinkwater, The Canadian Press