I first met Ken MacLennan decades ago. Ken was a high-school teacher in Toronto who in 1971 went to France to volunteer for a year at L’Arche, where he met fellow Canadian Lynn and introduced her to Denis, to whom she has stayed married for 54 years. Ken was made godfather of their firstborn, Christopher. He moved back to Toronto at the end of his time at L’Arche, so every time L and D and family came to Toronto, they visited him, and he and I became fast friends. Regularly through the years, we’d get on our bikes to meet at the cinema, see a film, and have lunch or dinner. He always came to celebratory events here, was part of the family, and we talked often on the phone. I also knew his first cousin, my good friend, writer Isabel Huggan.

He was a gay man beloved by everyone, with the bright smile and energy of a young boy; he rode his bike into his mid-eighties. But this last year, as he turned 89, was brutal for him; when he needed dialysis three times a week, he couldn’t cope alone in his apartment, and his loving niece Sarah and dear companion Glenn helped him move into assisted living. Which he disliked. Everything wore him down. When I visited him there last month, he told me he was ready to go. He died September 29.

His celebration of life was today, in the Catholic church where he’d worshipped for many years. There’s a story in my memoir Loose Woman about his time at L’Arche, to which he went as a devout Protestant; he’d accompany the disabled men to Mass but not take communion himself. One day, André, one of the men, was standing beside him. “André spoke rarely,” Ken told me, “but when he did speak, we listened. He was a man of great wisdom.” After André came back from taking communion, he tapped Ken on the shoulder. “Si on ne mange pas, on risque de mourir de faim,” he said. If one doesn’t eat, one risks dying of hunger.

His words had a powerful impact on Ken, who soon after converted to Catholicism. “A strange choice,” he said, chuckling, “because, as a gay man, I’ve chosen a religion that rejects everything about me. But it was something I needed to do.”

Latterly, especially after the horrifying revelations about Jean Vanier, Ken was angry at the church. Even so, his memorial was a deeply religious event. We should all be spoken of as warmly, with as much love, as Ken was today – described by family members and the priest as kind, courageous, principled, genuine, inspiring, thoughtful, welcoming, youthful, curious, generous, and loyal, full of joie de vivre; that he listened, was always there for family and friends. “He knew how to love,” said a great-niece. “One of the world’s good people,” said Lynn, who was sorry she had to fly home yesterday and miss the celebration of his life.

His niece Sarah told us his 90th birthday would have been November 24, so she asked us to make that date “Uncle Ken Day,” and to honour his memory by being extra kind that day. Will do. My next So True reading event on October 26 will be dedicated to Ken, who missed only one of the nineteen we’ve presented since 2014.

I miss him already.

Pictures on display at the church: Ken’s baby picture, with the spirit of lively innocence he carried all his life; with his dear Glenn; on a sky-diving trip not that long ago.

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