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.
With snow falling down, kind words were shared, stories were told and a few tears were shed.
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.
He had been residing in his ramshackle shed made of plywood and tarps on Victoria Street by the side of the road, tucked under a small tree, since last March.
A weathered-looking elderly man with a gravelly voice, Chenery spoke to BarrieToday in mid-January about his life prior to being on the street.
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.
“I still drink,” he said. “Three beers and that’s my limit. I could drink 12 or more, but at my age, after two, I get tired.”
Chenery was given the nickname “The Mayor” by friends on the street, because “I knew everybody in Barrie and I usually know what’s going on,” he told BarrieToday in an interview prior to his death.
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.
As Kee quietly spoke, a framed BarrieToday photo of Chenery was held up high, with light snow falling on the crowd.
“Rick was, and is regarded as, our friend, and he will be forever in our hearts, and we cherish the memory of Rick Chenery," he said.
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.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, he worked for Snap-on Tools in Concord, before falling on hard times, and arriving in Barrie.
His longtime friend, known as “Whitey" and who lives in the same small shed community at the Victoria Street encampment as Chenery did, spoke about his friend at the service.
“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.
“And when he had something to say — he said it from the heart. He was good-hearted and he didn’t care about himself … as long as everyone else was in their right mind. He would help anybody out,” Whitey added.
“Love ya, Rick,” Whitey said as he poured out a beer can onto the ground as a tribute to his friend.
“Smiley,” another friend of Chenery’s, said he had a "genuine heart, but he had that whole cover of a tough guy, and he had a really, really tough life.
“I’m glad a lot of people came today, because, I’m surprised so many people showed up, so I’m sure, up there, he’s quite proud that this many people showed their love, because he deserved it. He was a good soul.”
Another grizzled-looking friend, strolling up to the makeshift podium to speak, declared: “I don’t want to offend anybody, but I’m going to talk the way he speaks,” as laughter and cheers erupted.
“He’d be the first one to say you’re (expletive) idiots for being out here, and say ‘I’m cold, I’m going home. He’s dead’. He’d (also) be the first one to stand up for what he believes in and fight for everything. His heart was gold," the man said.
After a short pause, the man added: “Here’s to Rick,” as more beer was poured out in his honour.
As a final tribute, Chenery’s name will be inscribed onto a large boulder at Milligan’s Pond where the service was held, to join the other names of the fallen in their community which are already written there, as a reminder of the harsh life and equally harsh death of the unfortunate ones living on our streets.