McBURNEY, Ward Brent - Writer, philosopher, historian Ward McBurney passed away on October 24, 2019, at the age of 57, after living with Parkinson's disease for 19 years.
A beautiful voice has been silenced; a mighty heart has been stilled.
He was an inestimable gift in the lives of wife Shelley, parents Ernest and Helen McBurney (deceased), brother Blair, sister-in-law Maureen, and countless dear friends and family members.
Ward studied acting at Dalhousie University and Circle in the Square Theater School in Manhattan.
After that, he was a top English student at the University of Toronto; he went on to graduate English studies at Rutgers University.
In his professional life, he was an editor, most recently on the collected works of Northrop Frye.
First and foremost, Ward was a writer: of creative non-fiction, broadcast on CBC Radio One's Fresh Air and later collected in the books Sky Train and Wave Hands; of two novels of Canadians in the Great War, & after this our exile and Sap's War; and of three collections of poetry, Manhattan Falling Past Me to the Sky, Moonlighting, and Love & Disease.
Ward lived life to the full, in the face of unspeakable odds. His rage to create and perform and keep moving forward was irrepressible. His passions were wide-ranging, from Fred Astaire, to Bob Dylan, to Jean-Philippe Rameau, to the hard-working members of Toronto's local music scene, and from Milton's Paradise Lost, to Rimbaud, to e. e. cummings.
He had a keen sense of the genius of place: a farm in the Haute-Marne, France, was sacred to him, as were the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington/ Hamilton, and historical Toronto, with its epicentre at Fort York.
He was taken much too early and will be missed and remembered by many.
Thank you to the staff at the ICU of Toronto Western Hospital for their compassionate and expert care during his final fight.
A celebration of his life and literary legacy will take place in Toronto early next year.
Donations in Ward's memory may be made to the Friends of Fort York, or the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre.
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