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He calls himself Casper, like the friendly ghost, and he begs along rows of stopped cars, summer or winter, rain or shine, walking stiffly with a cane — white clothes, sometimes black — tattered and flowing.

You will know the strange figure from the corner of Baseline and Merivale roads, where he has panhandled for about six years, always sporting some kind of peace sign, sometimes bearing the words: “I mean you no harm.”

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It’s pouring rain this afternoon. Casper has stepped inside a bus shelter. We sit in the corner, talking over the noise of wet tires. Other people just stare.

Ottawa Citizen

He wears a cloth over his face, with holes for his nose and eyes, eyes that are very blue. A man become a ghost: how?

“I’m afraid of people. I see 1,000 people a day and not all of them are nice. It’s more of a defence or a deterrent.”

He is 35. He grew up in Vanier, he says, and, as a child, had a serious heart condition, aortic valve stenosis, which required open-heart surgery and long stays at CHEO. He lifts his white shirt and there is the tell-tale chest scar. On his hip, there are ugly sores that may have come from “sleeping on cardboard.”