When Instinct Screams Danger: Actor's Friend Sensed the Worst

Jeff Seymour knew something was terribly wrong the moment he learned his friend had missed a commitment. That kind of certainty—that gut-level knowledge that something has gone sideways—doesn’t come from nowhere. For Seymour, it came from years of knowing Stewart McLean as a man of discipline and intention. The actor was meticulous. Reliable. Not someone who simply overslept or brushed off obligations. When McLean didn’t show up on Saturday morning, Seymour told the Canadian Press on Friday, May 22, that he immediately sensed big trouble.

That instinct proved tragically accurate. McLean, 45, was reported missing earlier in May after he was last seen at his home in Lions Bay, British Columbia, on May 15. A week later, local police recovered his remains. Now, a homicide investigation is underway, and Seymour is left wrestling with both the loss and the haunting question of how someone so situationally aware, so careful, could have fallen victim to foul play.

Seymour had been fast friends with McLean for eight years, having met when the aspiring actor attended one of his coaching sessions. In the aftermath of his death, Seymour painted a portrait of a quietly extraordinary person: someone devoted to reading, comfortable in solitude out in Squamish, and beloved by virtually everyone who crossed his path. He wasn’t mixed up in anything dark. He didn’t run with crowds or court trouble. Yet somehow, he became vulnerable to it anyway.

That disconnect—between the kind of person McLean was and what appears to have happened to him—sits at the heart of Seymour’s bewilderment. How do you reconcile knowing someone as deeply situationally aware, almost impossible to catch off-guard, with the reality that something catastrophic occurred?“I don’t know how anybody could get the drop on Stew,”Seymour said, his confusion and grief tangled together.

McLean’s agent, Jodi Caplan, who represented him for more than a decade, released a statement confirming his death and painting him as a consummate professional—dedicated, funny, endlessly easy to work with. She noted that casting directors had reached out with the same refrain: he was one of the truly great ones, and he would be deeply missed. His credits included a role in Virgin River season 7, along with appearances in Supernatural, Arrow, Travelers, The 100, Siren, and others—a working actor’s résumé built on steady, solid work.

But it’s Seymour’s words that linger:“It just doesn’t make any sense.”That’s the grief of someone who trusted their instincts about another person, who knew something was catastrophically wrong before the full weight of reality landed. Justice, for those left behind, feels like the only path forward.