74-year old Ted spent the last hours of his life in his favourite seat inside the Tim Hortons on West Broadway in Vancouver.
In the city with the most expensive houses in Canada, 24-hour restaurants have become a means of survival for many people.
Advocates and experts say that Ted's death is an indictment of a system that has failed to provide shelter for the city's most vulnerable.
John Gingham, who sleeps outside the Tim Hortons every night and said he had been friends with Ted for 10 years, described him as a "good guy" who "loved his cigarettes and coffee."
"He'd talk. He'd joke around. He was friendly, right? If you didn't know him, he wouldn't say much to you," Gingham said.
"Fast-food places take the place of the shelters that we don't have," said longtime homeless advocate Judy Graves.
Graves knew Ted. She said he was struggling with extremely limited pensions to pay for both food and housing.
"Ted was all but living in that particular Tim Hortons. So he was there all the time, and I think people were just used to him, used to him being there, and used to ignoring him."
Graves said Ted knew he was close to the end, having been sick with cancer for some time.It's wonderful that Tim Hortons was Ted's refuge, on his final day a warm, safe place to die. But in a city awash in wealth and high-end everything, it's also a disgrace.
Federal immigration laws have failed not just the homeless but Vancouverites generally going all the way back to Mulroney's "citizenship for cash" days. Trudeau's contribution has been to announce the opening of a network of new immigration offices in major cities across China. Because of the indifference and dereliction of people like Mulroney and Trudeau, young people, even with educations and what once were thought of as "good jobs" can no longer afford to live where they were born and brought up.
