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Seaside town will blossom


thanks toKeith


A retired Canadian businessman has left his £2.25million fortune to the Devon seaside town of Sidmouth to plant a million flowers. Keith Owen gave the money he had saved for his retirement to the town. Sarah Newton reports on his remarkable legacy.


W


hen Keith Owen was a small boy, he spent care-free summer holidays in Devon, playing on its glorious stretches of golden


sand, visiting the ice cream parlours and, of


course, dipping in the sea. Although Keith had made a new home in


Canada, where he worked as an investment banker filling his spare time globetrotting, he planned to retire to Sidmouth and live out his final days in the county where he had spent his happiest ones. The Devon town has changed little


over the years, in fact Poet Laureate John Betjeman described Sidmouth as ‘a town caught still in a timeless charm’, so captivated was he by the quaint seaside resort. Sadly, shortly after Keith’s arrival in Sidmouth he was diagnosed with lung cancer and, given only eight weeks to live, the 69-year-old began to think of ways to leave his mark. In the end he said it with flowers – with one million of them to be exact– leaving them to the seaside town he had fallen in love with as a child. Shortly before his death, Keith took the


PHOTO: Keith Owen. Acknowledgment to The Sid Vale Association


24 Farewell Magazine


astonishingly generous decision to change his will and leave his £2.25million fortune to Sidmouth. His one condition was that the money should be spent on keeping the town ‘beautiful’, and he suggested residents should embark on a project to plant one


million bulbs. Now his last wish is about to become reality


as the community prepares to plant 153,000 flowers – which works out as nearly 10 for each of the town’s 17,000 residents – in the first phase of a massive operation. Handel Bennett, chairman of the Sid Vale


Association, which administers the Keith Owen Fund, said: “Keith wished the proceeds of his fund to be used to support local projects, which made use of voluntary labour, and in particular to sustain the ambience and way of life recognized in Sidmouth and its surroundings. “He felt Sidmouth reflected England as it used to be and he wished to encourage philanthropy amongst residents, in order to conserve and preserve all that the local community holds dear.


“Keith spoke in detail about the kind of things he wanted the money spent on. On one occasion he said, ‘Think of things that will get everyone together – I don’t know, plant a million bulbs’. “So we’re going to do exactly that. We will be


planting the bulbs at over 50 sites – roadsides, park land and public gardens. “We can then sit back and, in spring 2014, see what has sprung. Who knows, perhaps one day people will travel to see ‘a host of golden


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