Jacques Piché wheeled around a buggy loaded with shopping bags. (Shelley Lugg photo)
The ashes of an Osoyoos homeless man were laid to rest last week at Lakeview Cemetery, near the orchard where he often worked.
But the name and age on the plaque are different from how he was known over the past 20 years as he pushed a loaded-up buggy around Osoyoos.
Shelley Lugg, who along with her husband Harold Schwarz, befriended the man they knew as Jacques Piché, said his name was actually Gerard Pelletier. He was actually 74, and not 59, as previously believed.
Lugg said the small service at the cemetery was held on Oct. 6 and was attended by a few other neighbours, who also knew the man.
Pelletier was found dead in late August on Lugg and Schwarz’s property where he had been sleeping. The couple sometimes gave him work picking fruit.
Pelletier was a regular fixture around Osoyoos for the past 20 years, though he often travelled to Vancouver to stay during the winter. He was originally from Quebec.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
