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Cyril Winter was probably the most reviled and admired figure on Bank Street, the man with dead babies around his neck.

Winter, 70, the city’s most dogged anti-abortion demonstrator, died in hospital on March 9, only days before his first court appearance for violating Ontario’s new law providing a bubble zone around abortion clinics.

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Friends and family say he did not survive a procedure to insert stents in his failing cardiac system.

Winter and others that joined him in protest outside the Morgentaler Clinic on Bank Street were divisive figures in Ottawa.

In April of last year, Shayna Hodson, the clinic’s director of operations, told this newspaper that the presence of protestors like Winter left clinic patients feeling threatened and afraid, and said protestors routinely harassed patients and staff.

For others, Winter was an advocate for what they believed.

“He was a hero, to my mind, especially when you get the truth,” said Debbie Duval, the national capital organizer for Campaign Life Coalition. Winter, striking for his long, white hair, was not formally part of Campaign Life, which had reservations about his use of bloody, graphic imagery on display before thousands of passersby.