Leon (Pops) Alward had a knack for making the best of whatever hand he’d been dealt.

He turned his own struggles with drug use into a platform, speaking with media and politicians in Toronto’s Moss Park to draw attention to a deadly opioid crisis, and helped to launch the area overdose prevention site, even jerry-rigging a busted 20-foot-long tent with a coil of dollar-store rope.

“He just had this way of getting along with people,” says Natalie Dupuis, Alward’s former partner and mother to his youngest son. “He did the best that he could with what he had.”

Alward, 48, a key member of Toronto’s harm reduction community, died in the early hours of Saturday, May 25, from what those close to him told the Star was a fentanyl overdose. It happened in the Queen St. W. area, at a time when overdose prevention and safe consumption sites across the city were closed for the night. That included one Alward had used personally as well as where he acted as a volunteer, and where friends and colleagues could have likely saved his life, as he had done for others, by administering an effects-countering drug called Naloxone.

It was another gutting loss for a group who say Alward turned his drug use and experience with overdoses into an asset, adding it was just one of the many skills that would turn an affable, resilient and generous man into something of a public figure.

“He knew all the steps to be able to be safe and even he wasn’t safe, because of not having a safe place to use,” says Leigh Chapman, part of the original group who opened the Moss Park site in August 2017. “He worked at a site, he knew what to do, he started the first overdose prevention site and he too succumbed to an opioid poisoning in the middle of the night.”

Toronto Paramedics Services responded to 1,879 suspected opioid overdose calls in almost the first five months of this year. Of that total 75 were fatal, according to the city’s website.

The biggest risk of overdose comes from illicit versions of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The analogues have flooded the street market providing users with a cheap and powerful high — while exposing them to unpredictably lethal potency.

Frontline workers, who will be adding Alward’s name to a long list of loved ones who’ve died, have been pleading for the federal government to declare an emergency, and allow for the creation of a safe and regulated supply of drugs.

While the province has pulled back, cutting funding to two Toronto overdose prevention sites and leaving a third run by Toronto Public Health in limbo, the city’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, has called for decriminalization of drugs for personal use. Next week, the city’s Board of Health will receive a string of recommendations from De Villa on how the city can step up its own efforts and engage with all levels of government to better respond to an “unabated” crisis.

Dupuis says she wishes people could grasp the pull of opioid addiction and how the crisis impacts the people who love them.

“That is what makes it hard about this whole situation,” she says. “Good people are lost.”

Dupuis met Alward through a mutual friend in Moncton, N.B., in 2002, where they both have family roots. She was drawn to his kindness, free spirit, sharp and strange sense of humour and an almost childlike quality that at times, she says, could be infuriating. “You couldn’t help but laugh. It was his biggest asset and his biggest fault.”

By the time they met Alward was already on the path to addiction, she says, thanks largely to a prescription he was written for 100 Percocets a week to manage the pain of a slipped disc in his back. “He has always been in pain, but the way it was handled was terrible.”

Eventually he began seeking out stronger pills, like Oxycodone, she says, and she separated from him shortly after their son Darrian was born in 2003. Alward always had access to their son, she says, but she put her foot down during periods when he was unstable. Alward also had an older son and Dupuis says they made sure the boys were in each others lives.

People burn bridges, she says, but that doesn’t make them bad. “He didn’t want this. It is not something he chose. It is what happened,” Dupuis says. “That is what makes it so sad. The heart that Leon had and the sense of humour.”

There were periods of sobriety, she says, including a stint on Methadone, an opioid replacement medication. He slid back after another doctor prescribed fentanyl patches, she says. About three years ago Alward moved west, renting for a time in Oshawa then making his way to Toronto where he tried and was unable to get housing.

His son Darrian Dupuis-Alward, 15, says his fondest memories were visits with his father before he left New Brunswick when they bonded over video games and his father taught him about the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

“He showed me what passion was and how you have to stay strong in a tough situation and there is always light somewhere,” he says. “Even if he wasn’t always there he was still the best father I could have asked for.”

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Alward was staying at a Toronto area men’s shelter when the Moss Park overdose prevention site opened up on Aug. 12, 2017. The site was a cluster of tents, staffed by volunteers who decided anything was better than sitting back while people died from a drug supply flooded with unregulated versions of fentanyl. He showed up that first day and offered to help out.

Sarah Ovens, a co-ordinator with the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, of which she says Alward can fairly be called a founding member, met him on Day 3. During those chaotic early days, facing scrutiny from the media and the threat of arrest, Alward just rolled with whatever was thrown at him.

“He could just fix stuff and we constantly had stuff that needed to be fixed,” Ovens says. That included, she said, a busted 20-foot tent that seemed impossible to keep up. Alward took one look, told her he needed $20 for rope and ran to a Dollarama on Sherbourne St.

“He tied rope around the upper part of the frame and suspended it from a tree in three places ... he just had the thing hanging from a tree,” Ovens says. Later in the day, she says, he told her, “I jacked the rope but I am going to keep the $20 you gave me.”

The park is where Alward spoke with politicians and the media about overdose prevention and, when needed, would plunk himself down and show how it works. That meant showing Mayor John Tory the complex supplies needed for safe injections, says Ovens, and actually running through the process in front of provincial New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath. It was also something he did for Toronto Star as part of a year-old project about overdose prevention. In 2017, he was part of the team surprised on air with the news they were the CBC Metro Morning’s Torontonians of the year.

Harm reduction advocate Chapman was impressed by his willingness to educate people, knowing he was exposing himself to judgment; he was unafraid to inject drugs in front of media and politicians but also did things far outside of his comfort zone.

“He was so nervous and was so brave in telling his story.”

Alward, she says, like people who go home to a glass or three of wine or use legal or prescription drugs, was managing pain with what was available to him.

“Like many people he had experiences that make you drop to your knees and make you wonder how you carry on. Of course he is going to use drugs and frankly there is nothing wrong with that,” Chapman says. “The harms are that he had to buy street drugs from a market that is contaminated.”

Ovens says the idea that drug users are going to only consume drugs at supervised sites, which have fixed hours, is unrealistic, and why more people will die without a regulated alternative that people who use opioids could consume rather than seeking out street drugs.

Their friend and colleague had so much potential, Ovens says, and despite being worn down from living without housing he never entirely gave up his sense of joy.

“He was always kind of having a good time. He wanted s--- to not suck, he wanted to have housing. He could have been working so steadily after the park. But his homelessness kept f---ing everything up,” Ovens says.

It is an odd thing, she says, to be happy that Alward was willing to put himself out there and is now being celebrated, but she says what happened to him happens to good people all the time and is rarely noticed.

“Really awesome people that I know are not there anymore ... it is nice that people care about this. I wish it was always like this.”

A memorial service for Alward is being held on Sunday at Moss Park at 6:30 p.m.