A Walker’s Point cottager who was reportedly attacked with an edged weapon while delivering Christmas cards to neighbours in a Kitchener-Waterloo residential area will be missed by the Gravenhurst couple he called cottage neighbours for more than 35 years.

Hugh Hunter Brown, a retired district manager for Bell Canada, was slain on Dec. 15. Three days later Waterloo Regional Police arrested 22-year-old Trevor Lapierre of Kitchener and charged him with first degree murder.

Lapierre was also charged with the assault of a second man who had been attacked while shovelling snow in his driveway.

Lapierre was scheduled to appear in court yesterday for the third time, and according to published reports in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, his defence lawyer is expected to ask the judge to order a psychiatric assessment to help determine whether he should be held criminally responsible for his alleged actions.

Other newspaper reports indicated Lapierre’s family was aware he suffered from a mental instability and was trying to get him help after he displayed erratic behaviour.

Gravenhurst resident Wanda Corbett, who was a longtime neighbour and friend of the Brown family across Bradley Road in Walker’s Point, said she will really miss Hunter Brown.

“It was an awful shock. It’s very, very sad and tragic,” Corbett said in a telephone interview. “I can see him out there with his Christmas cards and I can just imagine him consoling the man who attacked him and asking him about his problems. That was the kind of man Hunter was.”

Corbett said Brown was exactly the man described by the media — a gentle and lovable person who enjoyed puttering around the cottage property from sun-up to sundown. He is survived by his wife of 49 years Bev (née Sparling), children Sandra and Michael, and three grandchildren.

“He and Bev did everything together. I don’t think he would take a trip to the dump without her going along for the ride,” Corbett said. “I don’t know how we will all survive without him.”

She and her husband Everett attended Brown’s funeral four days before Christmas alongside about 500 others.

“The funeral ended with his favourite music,” she said. “He always enjoyed the weekend dances up here at the old community centre.”

Bev Mallory of Stoney Creek, who cottaged in Walker’s Point before buying a cottage on Miller Island, called the killing a “senseless, sad thing.”

“He was a nice, nice guy,” Mallory told the Banner. “Anybody that would walk the whole neighbourhood to hand-deliver Christmas cards…”