Stewart McLean, the Canadian actor who most recently appeared in a 2026 episode of Netflix’s Virgin River and whose disappearance from his Lions Bay, British Columbia home on May 15 had prompted an urgent missing person investigation, has been found dead. He was 45.
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team confirmed Friday that investigators had located and identified his remains in the Lions Bay area. Police are treating his death as a homicide.
No suspect has been announced. The cause of death has not been officially determined.
The investigation began as a missing person case when Squamish RCMP received a report on May 18 that McLean had not been seen since May 15.
Within days, evidence uncovered during that investigation led police to escalate the matter. The IHIT, the specialized homicide unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, deployed on May 20 and formally assumed control.
By Friday, the search for a missing person had become the search for answers in what police are treating as a murder investigation.
“As the investigation continues to unfold, homicide investigators are working to collect and analyze evidence, review CCTV footage and conduct interviews to build a timeline of Mr. McLean’s activities prior to May 15, 2026,”
Cpl. Esther Tupper of IHIT said in a statement. “We are pursuing all available leads as we work to find answers for the family, friends and loved ones of Mr. McLean.”
Who Was Stewart McLean?
Stewart McLean built his career in the Vancouver film and television industry over more than a decade, the specific ecosystem of Canadian production that has made British Columbia one of the most active filming locations in North America and that employs thousands of actors, crew members and support professionals in the communities around Metro Vancouver and the Sea-to-Sky corridor.
He worked primarily in and around the places he knew, Vancouver, Bowen Island, Squamish, Lions Bay itself.
His IMDb credits extend back to 2015 and reflect the steady, reliable work of a character actor who was known in the industry as someone worth calling back, a professional who showed up prepared, brought something specific to whatever role he was given and made other people’s jobs easier by doing his own well.
His most recent credit was the 2026 episode of Virgin River, the Netflix drama based on the Robyn Carr novels that has become one of the streaming service’s most popular recurring series, filmed largely in British Columbia.
McLean played a barfly in that episode, a supporting character role of the kind that fills out the world of a television drama and that requires a performer who can make a few scenes feel inhabited without drawing focus from the show’s leads.
He also appeared in an episode of Fox’s Murder in a Small Town, in the Paramount+ true crime series Happy Face, in the DC series Arrow, in the Canadian science fiction series Travelers, in the Lifetime TV movie The Killer Inside: The Ruth Finley Story and in the Freeform series Beyond.
He was also a producer, someone who understood both sides of the work that brings a film or television project from a script to a completed production, and who used that understanding in his own projects alongside his acting.
Jodi Caplan, his agent at Vancouver-based Lucas Talent, had represented McLean for more than ten years.
Her tribute on Friday captured the specific quality of the professional relationship they had built across that decade. “He was always such a pleasure to deal with, dedicated, professional, eager, and endlessly funny.
Many casting directors have reached out to share their condolences with Stew’s family and with our agency, and every message says the same thing: what a truly great guy he was, and how deeply he will be missed.”
The casting director tributes are meaningful in a specific way. Casting directors are the people who decide which actors get considered for which roles.
When they reach out to an agent after a client’s death, they are not obligated to do so, they do it because the relationship was real and because the person they are mourning mattered to them professionally and personally. Multiple casting directors made that call on Friday.
Lions Bay And The Investigation
Lions Bay is a small community in British Columbia’s Sea-to-Sky region, the corridor that runs northwest from Vancouver through Squamish and Whistler, one of the most scenically dramatic stretches of the province and home to a collection of small coastal and mountain communities whose residents include people who work in Vancouver and live outside it by choice.
The community sits approximately 20 kilometres northwest of Vancouver along the Sea-to-Sky Highway, on the rocky shoreline between the water and the mountains. It is not a large community.
When Squamish RCMP received the missing person report on May 18, three days after McLean was last seen at his home there, the search for him was taking place in a relatively contained geographic area with the specific constraints that Lions Bay’s terrain and location impose.
The investigation moved through its phases with the speed that available evidence apparently demanded.
Squamish RCMP began the missing person investigation. Evidence they uncovered prompted them to escalate.
The IHIT deployed on May 20, the specialized homicide team that takes over cases when evidence points to a killing rather than a disappearance.
On May 21, RCMP publicly announced the transition to a homicide investigation. On May 22, the remains were located and identified.
The RCMP crime scene photographs published by CBC News show officers and a dog in the Brunswick Beach area of Lions Bay near McLean’s home, images that give a sense of the terrain and the specific proximity of the search to the place where he was last seen.
No suspect has been identified publicly. No cause of death has been officially disclosed pending the work of the BC Coroners Service. The investigation is active and ongoing.
What Investigators Are Asking For
The IHIT is asking anyone with information about McLean’s activities or circumstances before May 15, 2026 to come forward.
Investigators are reviewing CCTV footage, conducting interviews and working to build a complete timeline of his movements in the days and hours before he was last seen at his Lions Bay residence.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the IHIT information line at 1-877-551-IHIT (4448) or by email at ihitinfo@rcmp-grc.gc.ca. Tips can be provided anonymously.
The investigation will determine the circumstances of Stewart McLean’s death and, eventually, who is responsible for it.
Friday’s confirmation of his death is not the end of the story, it is the point at which investigators, who have been working since May 18, can apply the full resources of a homicide investigation to finding those answers for the family, friends and colleagues of a 45-year-old actor who was last seen at his home in Lions Bay on a Friday evening and was never seen again.
