An Osoyoos homeless man known as “Jacques Piché” died in his sleep outdoors at a local farm last week. He has been seen around Osoyoos for the past 20 years, wheeling around a buggy loaded with shopping bags. (Harold Schwarz photo)
For about 20 years, he was a regular fixture around Osoyoos, a somewhat disheveled looking man pushing around a buggy stuffed with bags containing odds and ends most people would consider junk.
The man some knew as “Jacques Piché” or “Gentleman Jack” was found dead last week on a rural property near Osoyoos.
Little is known about Piché, if that is actually his name, but he was believed to be 59 and originally from Quebec.
“He was very likable and a very even keeled person,” said Harold Schwarz, who knew Piché throughout his time in Osoyoos and who found his body on his farm last Wednesday morning. “You couldn’t have met a more pleasant fellow. Always in a good mood.”
But the homeless man was also very eccentric, perhaps suffering from mental illness, although Schwarz insists Piché never had issues with alcoholism or drug addiction.
Nor did Piché look for charity, although he did play his harmonica outside Buy-Low Foods to earn a little change.
Over the years, he often picked fruit for Schwarz, who said he never had enough work to keep him fully employed.
“He had a lot of pride,” said Shelley Lugg, Schwarz’s wife, who only knew Piché about five years. “He always worked for the money.”
Lugg said Piché loaded up his heavy buggy with soggy, mouldy clothes and with pieces of metal, including lost keys that he found. He had chains with locks on them.
Schwarz said he has no idea what Piché kept in the cart, which was left on his property when Piché died sometime during Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
“I never looked,” said Schwarz. “I really had no interest. Just bags and bags of stuff. It would take a brave soul to go through it.”
Piché was at one time a talented jewelry maker, but Schwarz and Lugg said he gave that up after his jewelry making tools were apparently stolen.
“He was quite an artist,” said Schwarz. “He was always telling me that people were robbing him and he couldn’t keep anything, so he gave it up because every time he made something, someone would take it from him, so he quit making it.”
Some of that might have been paranoia.
Schwarz said Piché never wanted to leave his buggy behind, but would always take it into town with him on his daily outings.
He used to go down to the beach often, but the buggy became so heavy that Piché tended to stay near the top of the hill, around Buy-Low Foods, Schwarz said.
Piché often travelled back and forth across the country, for a while living in northern B.C., and usually spending his winters in a carport in Vancouver near London Drugs on Broadway.
Although a number of people in Osoyoos tried to help him, Piché insisted on staying homeless.
“He considered himself to be a hobo,” said Schwarz, adding that Piché was proud of it. “That was his title and I guess he had to live up to it.”
One time Piché tried to hitchhike to Vancouver with his entire collection, but Schwarz said he waited for about a month at a viewpoint on the road to Keremeos before a sympathetic trucker finally gave him a ride.
Schwarz said he sometimes asked Piché about whether he had a family, but the homeless man never wanted to talk about it. Nor did he ever say where he was from, other than obviously being a French Canadian from Quebec.
“For a long time he never spoke any English,” said Schwarz. “I had a little bit of French, not much, so I sort of pretended to go along, but I didn’t know what he was saying. But then somewhere he took up English and he’s pretty good at it. One day he was just speaking English. It was amazing.”
Schwarz said somebody later told him that Piché knew English much earlier, but kept it a secret.
Lugg said Piché read books and often talked about philosophy.
A cause of death has not been disclosed, but Lugg wonders if the thick smoke in the air might have exacerbated his respiratory problems.
“I think he just wore himself out,” said Schwarz. “I’ve seen him coming out of Osoyoos and he was just leaning on his whole load, such a huge load, pushing it out of town. The heart can only take so much.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
Jacques Piché wheeled around a buggy loaded with shopping bags. (Shelley Lugg photo)
