'I’m sure, up there, he’s quite proud that this many people showed their love, because he deserved it,' says friend of Rick Chenery
The final chapter of Rick “The Mayor” Chenery was written Sunday as friends gathered together for a small memorial service outside at Milligan’s Pond to honour him.Chenery, who died Feb. 17 at the age of 75, was a local homeless man. He was recently profiled in BarrieToday stories chronicling the plight of shed dwellers on Victoria Street, a short distance from downtown Barrie.
His wife, he explained, had succumbed to cancer six years ago. They split up in 1998 because he “hit the bottle and ... lost everything,” Chenery said at the time. Tom Kee, the head of Life Patrol outreach with New Life Fellowship Baptist Church in Innisfil, and organizer of the memorial, opened the service on Sunday with a eulogy, while a crowd of around 40 people, mostly friends of Chenery and also homeless, had gathered around Kee.
According to the eulogy, Chenery was born in Holland and moved to Canada with his family when he was five years old. He didn’t speak a word of English, only Dutch. “I miss him,” Whitey said, choking back tears. “But it goes on. I hated him as much as I could look at him, but I loved him too much.
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