Afew years ago, while on assignment for Maclean’s Magazine at Toronto City Hall, I found myself standing in a cafeteria lineup beside then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford. I ordered a turkey wrap; he ordered two. When we reached the cash register, he wasn’t rude to the woman behind the counter, nor was he especially polite. Instead, he was shy and curt — in the same way little kids often behave when they’re forced to address adult strangers in public. He wore a dark suit, and he smelled of cologne.

A better investigative journalist than I would have tapped the mayor on the shoulder and asked him a few pressing questions: “Why do you lie so freely? Will you seek treatment for your drug and alcohol addiction? How much exactly of that particular commodity do you have to eat at home?’’ But I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t, because there was something actually thrilling — almost sacred—about standing in silence beside a man who commanded so much noise.

Sadly, that man will no longer command anything, nor wait in line for cold cuts. Rob Ford died Tuesday from a rare form of cancer called Liposarcoma — or as we tend to put it in the press, “after a long battle with Liposarcoma’’— as though terminal diseases can be outmaneuvered like enemies in war. Ford was 46; he leaves behind a wife, two young children, and a conflicting — and conflicted — legacy.

His legacy is conflicted because we, the people of Toronto, are. Despite the former mayor’s drug-addled tenure in office, rife with scandal and aspersions cast at all manner of ethnic communities, sexual orientations, and gender identities (Rob had an especially difficult time grasping the meaning of “transgender’’), Torontonians left and right, on and offline have been extraordinarily, and shockingly kind about the death of our former leader.

And I must say, even as a gay Torontonian who despises the politics of so-called Ford nation (in 2014 Ford was the only member of city council to vote against a proposal for a homeless shelter for LGBT youth in Toronto), I find myself among the suddenly sympathetic. I’m still completely turned off by the politics of Ford and his brother Doug, and their extra-political activities — the 911 calls, say, from the Ford residence prompted by arguments between Rob and his wife — but I’m also deeply saddened by the news of the former mayor’s death. Why is this?

I think it’s because whether we liked or loathed his ideas, Rob Ford was such a spectacular affront to Canadian gentility and self-righteousness that it was near impossible not to root for him at times.

The power of Ford’s populism, as my Uber driver put it this afternoon, was his childlike “sincerity.’’ Unlike that other florid populist, Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Ford came off, rightly or not, as a genuine believer in every brutish thing he said or did. And unlike Trump, whose opportunism is as plain as his hair is weird, Rob Ford never registered as a cynic, but as an inelegant and profoundly earnest guy — okay, jerk — who believed in his heart of hearts that he was doing right by his city. Even his bizarre appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show at the height of his meltdown had an air of sincere — and seriously misplaced — political passion: Ford threw campaign merchandise out to Kimmel’s audience, as though the chortling Americans who caught his graphic t-shirts knew, or cared, about his revolutionary plans for the Toronto Transit Commission.

Sincere populism of the Ford ilk is probably no less dangerous than the cynical populism of Donald Trump (who would sing the praises of gays and Muslims tomorrow if it bought him an extra vote). But at least in Rob’s case, it seems a bit less loathsome. And even, against our better judgment, a little fun. As a teenager named Jamal explained it to me at Ford Fest, the late mayor’s annual community BBQ, in 2013 (where everybody got a handshake and a hamburger, courtesy of the mayor), “I like him as an entertainer. That’s why I’m here.’’

That could be why I’m here too, writing this. Rest in peace, Rob. I’ll have a turkey wrap in your honor.

Or maybe two.

Emma Teitel is a national columnist for the Toronto Star in Canada.