‘Dear Mother’: Canadian man pays off his mother’s mortgage on his birthday

"I want to celebrate my life by celebrating the woman who gave me life."

Canadian YouTube user iProjectAtlas celebrated his birthday with a beautifully selfless and generous gesture: he paid off his mother's mortgage.

"So for the last two and half years I've been saving my money, hoping to do right by a very special woman in my life. I know a lot of my friends wanted me to go out, to celebrate, but this for me is far greater then any gift/party I can hope for," he wrote on YouTube.

He captured her reaction on video:

"Wow."

On Reddit, he explained that he managed to save the lump sum on a salary of just $30,000 a year:

"I was only making 30k a year when I had reached the intended mark," he wrote. "I quit drinking 3 years ago, quit drugs, though I do go out every now and then I only spending maybe 10 dollars on those weekends…I mean all the numbers aside there is one thing i do believe, when there is a goal you truly want to reach all the other things in your life begin to work around it. Then all the small choices you make start to add up, so yes you guys all have the resources because if I can do what I did on 30k a year then so can all of you."

He emphasized that he is "by no means a perfect son" and that "what I did for my mother can't even amount to 1/10 of what she's done for me."

"That being said seeing her smile, seeing her shoulders drop her breathe a sigh a relief made everything worth it. I dont (sic) expect everyone to understand but I just wanted to share that, to see what a small gesture can do for those closest to us," he wrote.

Reminder: Mother's Day is coming up.