Remembering the police officer who penned the lyrics for one of Canada's most popular songs

Family and friends are remembering Dave Richardson, a police officer on Vancouver Island who penned the lyrics of the legendary 1972 hit Wildflower, as a selfless, soft-hearted romantic.

Richardson died last Sunday after a short illness. He was 77.

Wildflower was the third single from B.C. band Skylark, featuring a couple of up-and-coming musicians including keyboardist, David Foster who would go on to become an immensely successful music producer. 

According to the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, Wildflower is on of the most performed songs in the history of Canadian popular music, receiving over two million plays in the U.S., with more than one million copies sold.

It was the only hit for the band, however. 

Valley Hennell, a longtime friend of Richardson who handled the administration and publishing for Wildflower, said the song originally started as a poem.

"He was actually more a poet at the time than a songwriter and he was constantly writing poems. From the time he was a child he walked the streets of Victoria making up poems and songs and singing them to himself," Hennell said. 

The legend of Wildflower

Wildflower, as the story goes, was written for Richardson's girlfriend at the time, who was a nurse at the Royal Jubilee Hospital. 

"She had lost a couple of patients on the geriatric ward and was very upset and that inspired him to write this poem," Hennell said. 

Richardson was friends with Foster and gave him a stack of his poems. Doug Edwards, Skylark's guitarist, fished this particular poem out and wrote it out to music. 

Foster called it a special moment.

"When we went to record it and just listened to the magic that came out, we kind of knew we were onto something," the producer told CHEK News from his home in Los Angeles. 

Multiple covers, samples

Wildflower has been covered over 75 times, says Hennell, and has been heavily sampled by artists including Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and Drake.  

"[I remember] I got a phone call — maybe it was a fax back in the day — from Death Row Records asking me if someone called Tupac Shakur could sample our song," Hennell said. 

She said she had to ask them to call her back so she could ask her teenage son what a sample was — "it was that new in those days" — and also figure out a way to tell Richardson that the record company wanted to sample his song. 

'Soft-hearted' person

Hennell said Richardson became a police officer because after losing his father when he was just four, he looked up to his childhood friend's father, who was an officer with Saanich police.

"He was a romantic," Hennell said. "He was generous his entire life. He was warm hearted and extremely selfless." 

Richardson's brother Doug described the late lyricist as a "soft-hearted person."

Leslie Richardson, Richardson's wife, said his words have an enduring impact.

"In Israel, we met a woman who said 'that was my favourite song growing up.' And this kind of thing happens all the time," she said.

Listen to Wildflower — and some of its best covers — by listening to this segment on CBC's On The Coast: