Richard

Richard Allan Downey was my neighbour.

He lived on the street in Toronto's Bloor West Village.

He slept in a tent in a green space over Line 2 of Toronto's subway.

Mary Jane found him, unresponsive, on the the morning of December 22.

EMS could not revive him.

Richard is missed.

There is so much to mourn about our cities and the way we have decided to let them develop. And just as much about what we accept from our economic arrangements and our policies.

In 2021, in my city 7,347 people were unhoused. The numbers have only grown worse.
We lost 509 fellow Torontonians to opioid related deaths that year.
One in four Toronto households is food insecure.

Joel Sternfeld offers a photographic monument to David Buckel in Our Loss. The book memorializes one man's act of love, the passage of all that lives and the tragedy of the climate crisis.

This small homage to Richard was inspired by Sternfeld's moving work.