His mother, née Mary Muriel Daley, was the daughter of a Methodist minister centrally involved in the negotiations which led to the creation of the United Church of Canada.

Allan Outram, son of the owner of the hardware store in Port Hope, served and was wounded in the First World War.

Two of his teachers, the philosopher Emil Fackenheim and the critic Northrop Frye, with the latter of whom Outram studied Milton, Spenser and (when E. J. Pratt became ill) Shakespeare, had a profound and lasting effect on him.

During the summers of 1950 and 1951, Outram also served as an officer cadet in the reserve system of the Royal Canadian Navy, aboard frigates in the Bay of Fundy and at HMCS Stadacona in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Outram went back to work with the CBC, first, again, as a television stagehand, then as a stage crew foreman, a position he held until early retirement at the age of sixty in 1990.

Speakers included film director Ted Kotcheff, literary critic Alberto Manguel and poet Peter Sanger.

[3] Its limited editions (60-80 copies) of four small collections by Outram, Creatures (1972), Thresholds (1973), Locus (1974) and Arbor (1976), illustrated with wood engravings by Howard, are prized by collectors and can be found in public collections such as the University of Toronto Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, which is also the repository for Outram's personal papers and manuscripts.

In a 1988 essay titled "Hard Truths", the literary critic Alberto Manguel wrote: “Richard Outram’s metaphysical message is neither fashionable nor easy to grasp, but he is one of the best poets writing in English.” [5] Outram's work transcends fashion, expressing a private voice of public consequence in poems of great formal variety and range of tone.