A cyclist fatally wounded during a ride in Richmond over the weekend was always smiling, his grieving wife says.

Brad Dean was biking on Sunday morning with other members of the Gastown Cycling Group when six cyclists were struck by a car.

Five went to hospital – two with serious injuries – but Dean was pronounced dead at the scene.

His wife, Adele Esnault-Dean, said her husband died doing what he loved.

"It was an obsession. He said it was a passion, but it was an obsession. He loved cycling," she told CTV News.

She said she'll remember her husband as a fun-loving, good-natured person with an infectious smile.

"He just always wants to make people laugh and smile. He always had a smile," she said.

"That's why I loved him so much... No matter what my mood was, no matter how rotten a mood I was in, he never was annoyed or anything. He always just tried to cheer me up."

The morning the 33-year-old died, Esnault-Dean said he'd been riding with a group, single file, along River Road.

"They were going the right speed, they were as far as they could be to the side without being in the ditch. They did everything right, and my husband still died."

Dean worked as a portfolio manager for Dean Alexander, managing director at Cypress Capital Management.

He'd been a selfless employee, and always volunteered for the tough jobs no one else wanted, Alexander said.

"He didn't think about himself. He always thought about other people," Alexander said. He described the death of his former employee as "like losing one of your own."

The day that Dean died, he'd been cycling with a group being led by Adam Holcombe.

The cyclist said the car that struck Dean and other bikers narrowly missed hitting him first.

"I saw an oncoming car that appeared to be passing a cyclist on the other side of the road," Holcombe said.

He said the car "just missed" hitting him, but struck others biking right behind him. He was thrown into the ditch, and when he got up, he saw that several were injured.

Holcombe said he heard another member of the group screaming, and scrambled out of the ditch to find out what happened.

Debris from the bikes and the cyclists' possessions were strewed across the side of the road, and one of the cyclists was unconscious and bleeding.

"Unfortunately, Brad was further down in the ditch," he said.

Both Holcombe and Esnault-Dean said they wanted to speak to CTV News to pass along a message on Dean's behalf, about tensions between cyclists and drivers.

"It doesn't have to be an 'us versus them' thing. We all want to be on the road. We want to be safe," Holcombe said.

"It's not 'There's a cyclist,' it's 'There's a human.' That's somebody's husband. That's somebody's friend. That's somebody's club mate. That's somebody's father."

Richmond Mounties have provided few details on the cause of the crash, but said that the driver is cooperating in their investigation. The 19-year-old Burnaby resident was uninjured in the crash.

Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact Const. David Purghart of the Richmond RCMP Road Safety Unit at 604-278-1212.

With a report from CTV Vancouver's David Molko