Everybody knew Richard.

A fan of crossword puzzles, writer of poetry, artist, photographer, a fast friend to dogs and then perhaps their owners, Richard spent years living outside along the waterfront particularly the Toronto Music Garden, a green space that stretches between Lower Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street.

“To be candid, he was probably a lot more warm towards my dog than he was me,” said Jennifer Evans, who moved to the area about five years ago. She was walking her dog in the park and he was the first person she met. “Everybody knew Richard.”

During all four seasons, for at least five years, Richard sought shelter beneath the trees or structures that could fit him and the electric wheelchair he relied on, as both legs had been amputated at his hips.

On Monday, Richard was found without vital signs inside the glass enclosed shelter for clients of the Island Yacht Club Ferry steps from the water, at the base of Dan Leckie Way. Toronto Police media relations officer Const. Alex Li, speaking with the Star on Tuesday, confirmed police got the call at about 7:15 a.m. that a man in the shelter appeared to be deceased.

Evans found out when she was walking in the park, and posted a Twitter tribute for a man with a bit of a “murky” past who had a difficult life he had told people included the loss of his wife and child in an accident.

“He lost his legs in one as well. But every day he got up and looked at the sun and did crosswords and wrote poetry,” Evans posted. “You were a cranky poet, and your park and the people in it will miss you.”

That story of the loss of his family, coupled with the news of his death and the community he found are what his daughter, who said his name was Kevin Fournier and who hadn’t been in contact with him since about the age of six, is now trying to process. That grief also comes with new connections with family members such as his mother who she first spoke with on Friday.

She asked the Star not use her name, choosing her words carefully and with compassion, and speaking about a man who she had searched for and wished she had known but lived just blocks from her home in Liberty Village.

“He was under my eye the whole time,” she said. “My worst fear was he died alone and I wanted to make sure he was cared for.”

“He was always in my thoughts. I wished he knew that as well. That would have been enough for me.”

What she has learned, from speaking to her grandmother, was that her father loved the outdoors. Even taking off with just a blanket to be outside as a child. From Evans, who she connected with online, she learned that he was cared for and in his own way left a deep impact on many people’s lives.

His daughter couldn’t speculate on why he claimed to have lost his family only that she understood how anybody wanting to escape deep hurt and trauma while struggling to survive would, in a sense, wipe their past clean.

“Everyone has a past. We just have to be kind to one another.”

Longtime area resident Kathryn Exner, a bike courier and photographer, met Richard about six years ago while walking her yellow Labrador named Yogi, who passed away last year.

“Because I saw him every day I would wave to him. He would wave back. It started slowly, but it got to the point where we would stop and chat,” Exner said.

“Over time my dog really started to like him a lot. Richard got to know a lot of people with dogs because he had dog treats on him.”

They spoke about a shared love of photography and a recent discussion included the visual effect that heavy fog had on the park. Richard was extremely observant, she said, and kept an eye on everything. “He didn’t like people to feed the ducks.”

He was also incredibly resourceful, said Exner, staking out power sources where he could plug in his wheelchair and jury-rigging protection from the elements with everything from duct tape to a golf umbrella.

Often freshly shaved, Richard also took pride in his appearance. “We would talk about what shampoo was on sale at the dollar store,” Exner said. “He frequently smelled of aftershave.”

It wasn’t an entirely peaceful existence. While he had good relationships with some park staff there were run-ins with others, she said, and differing views on culture and social issues had resulted in explosive debates. Exner said she felt his harsher moments were seeded by pain from his past and the struggles of daily life.

Richard had spent time in emergency shelters and had told her he did not feel safe and that he could not be accommodated because of his chair. So he carved out a life in the park.

“Everybody has a story if you take the time to hear it,” Exner said.

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Evans thinks there must be a housing solution that doesn’t involve forcing people like Richard back into a system he has rejected for safety reasons or otherwise.

“Just a tiny house we could have set up for him, in a way that wouldn’t be obstructive in the park,” she said. “I think we have all this public land and it is beautiful and we have to be able to find places for people to live that don’t fit into society the way everybody else does. A cot is not shelter.”

Evans is the co-founder of Tech Reset Canada and her work focuses on using technology to reduce social inequality, particularly when it comes to people experiencing homelessness. In late December 2017, during a brutal cold snap and with people being told there was no room in city warming sites, Evans used Twitter to crowdsource motel rooms.

Over the years she was among area residents who tried to nudge Richard towards an emergency shelter, something he was “adamant” he would not do. “I can only imagine how hard it was for him out there.”

Providing tiny homes for people who have experienced trauma is taking root in Alberta with the creation of compact neighbourhoods for veterans in Calgary and Edmonton and made possible through the Homes for Heroes Foundation, as reported by Global News. The homes are about 300 square feet and each village includes support services for residents.

Before the park, Richard frequented Nathan Phillips Square, beneath the concrete elevated walkways that frame the square in front of city hall.

That is where outreach worker Greg Cook, who met him about a decade ago, got to know a man who he described as pleasant, open and determined to live life on his own terms. Even when sweeps of the square, which workers who knew Richard estimated took place a few times over the past decade, meant people were forced to move, he stayed put.

“Richard somehow, I don’t know how, he kept sleeping there,” said Cook, with Sanctuary Toronto.

Drawing was another outlet and source of comfort. Another outreach worker with Sanctuary, Lorraine Lam, also met Richard at the square and said he produced coloured-pencil drawings, mostly of flowers and animals. He also gave her a poem and copies of photographs he’d taken.

“I feel like that was a way he processed his world and feelings,” she said. “It was like an oasis from the rest of the world he was struggling with. He said to me once the squirrels never bothered him, but human beings were more annoying.”

Each night, across Toronto, thousands of people take refuge in emergency shelters, drop-ins, and three city respite sites — domes designed to hold 100 cots and run by local service agencies.

On Monday, in the early hours of the morning, 6,600 people were recorded as using the city’s overtaxed emergency shelter system and close to 675 were using 24-7 drop-ins, city respite sites and two of the volunteer-led Out of the Cold program sites, according to the city’s website. By Friday, the city aimed to open up spaces for 360 more people, which will include beds in Seaton House, city-run hotel spaces and spots for single refugee claimants in a building at Yonge Street and Drewry Avenue, according to the website.

Richard’s name will be added to the Homeless Memorial at the Church of the Holy Trinity. It is a paper list, posted behind glass and one so long that a mechanism was recently added to allow people to flip through the pages.

A service is held the second Tuesday of every month to remember people lost to exposure and inadequate access to medical and mental health care, poverty, violence and neglect.

Community and family members plan to attend a candlelit memorial taking place at the Toronto Music Garden on Nov. 26, starting at 7 p.m. Evans will be among them.

“The park has definitely lost something without him. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that,” she said. “It was a ritual for people to look for him, to see if he was OK.”

“It is just heartbreaking that he is gone.”

Correction — Nov. 18, 2019: This article was updated from a previous version that mistakenly said a service is held the first Tuesday of every month to remember people lost to exposure and inadequate access to medical and mental health care, poverty, violence and neglect.