Can’t say I “knew” him, but did buy books and an audiocassette from him in the late 80s; he standing on a street corner, sometimes in the financial district sometimes not; me going about my business as a 21-year-old messenger boy.
Still have all the books, wish I knew what became of the cassette – I remember it being hilarious.
He was not a great writer in any conventional sense, but still clever, funny, and the perpetrator of wonderful pranks: submitting famous stories to literary competitions under assumed names; or holding his own “competitions” by soliciting unknown writers through classified ads and publishing the results (plus, I believe but can’t be sure, some of his own deliberately dreadful tales) under titles like “Worst Canadian Stories”. His sense of humour was encapsulated in the name of his self-publishing imprint: Charnel House.
I hadn’t given him much thought over the last 20 years or so, but am saddened to hear he’s gone. RIP
