'I can be trouble': B.C. poet filled home with stolen flowers after cancer diagnosis
Laura Sciarpelletti | CBC News | Posted: June 24, 2019 12:38 AM | Last Updated: June 24, 2019
Award-winning poet Brian Brett wanted to be surrounded by beauty
Canadian poet and novelist Brian Brett was told by doctors earlier this year he had only a 50 per cent chance of seeing another spring after being diagnosed with cancer.
So he surrounded himself with his favourite things: beautiful spring flowers.
"I just wanted to live to the fullest in the time I had left," Brett told Laura Lynch, guest host of The Early Edition.
The man with the pruning shears
For more than two decades, Brett lived on a 10-acre farm on Salt Spring Island, B.C., but he recently moved to Vancouver to be close to his doctors.
He missed the natural beauty of the Gulf Islands.
"I always had so much beauty surrounding me there for 25 years. So it's a little tougher in the city."
Brett decided he didn't want to just look at flowers while walking around the city. He wanted to have them, even if they weren't his to take.
"Before I knew it I was pruning the neighbourhood," he said of his illicit gardening.
He pruned city trees, tidied up after himself, and took the flowers home to brighten up each room. He took cherry and plum blossoms, as well as magnolia blossoms.
"A lot of them ended up in my bedroom and so it was pretty extravagant. For a while there I went into a real frenzy."
But eventually, he felt guilty and stopped taking flowers.
"I realized how intensively and how beautifully [the city gardeners] were organizing our environment around us through the tree plantings and so on."
'I can be trouble'
Brett grew up on farms in the Fraser Valley, where his father was a peddler who sold produce.
"We peddled potatoes and apples and fruit and vegetables ... We would hit all the farms. And so I really got into that kind of lifestyle with the land ... Maybe I have the body of a 70-year-old, but I have the mind of a 19-year-old. I can be trouble."
Brett's cancer prognosis has improved in the last few months and his doctors now say he has two to three years left to live.
"I'm pretty creaky and I'm on 19 pills a day, but I have a remarkable ability to survive."
In the meantime, he'll continue to fill his home with things that bring him joy.
"I just love beauty. And it's more than the flowers. I love to be surrounded by beautiful objects."
Listen to the full interview here:
With files from The Early Edition.
Corrections:- A previous version of this story incorrectly said Brett's father stole produce. In fact, he sold produce. June 24, 2019 2:02 PM