C.B. Macpherson, known as “Brough” to his many friends, died peacefully on July 31 in the Toronto General Hospital. He was 75. He had been in frail health the last few years, but his mind remained sharp and clear till the end, and his research and writing continued.
Brough was a good and gentle man as well as a truly great scholar whose books were translated into and studied in many languages, and whose influence has been and remains profound in Canada and in much of the world. His early essays on Locke were for me an eye-opener. To have heard him lecture in the US in the days of Senator McCarthy, as I did, was good for the soul as well as the mind.
He distilled from his critical reading of the great works of Liberalism and Marxism the kind of practical wisdom that surely must have made better citizens out of many generations of students, not only at the U of T, and not only in Canada.
— Christian Bay