Dying Ottawa man’s gift to small coastal town of Sidmouth, England: a legacy of beauty

Six years ago, John Keith Owen, 69, of Ottawa gave his entire $3.73 million fortune to the small seaside town of Sidmouth, England.

The dying investment banker suggested to town officials that they plant a million bulbs to help beautify the town.

And that's exactly what's happening.

The community took his suggestion seriously. And while the goal is certainly "a bit optimistic," community volunteers are getting ready to plant the first round of 153,000 bulbs next month.

They'll plant daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses across 50 different locations.

The Ottawa Citizen reports that before he died, Owen ensured that his legacy would live on indefinitely: Sidmouth's conservation and heritage association will only be spending the interest of his invested fortune each year — about £120,000 (or $195,000 CAD).

As for how that interest is spent, he left those decisions to the discretion of the town. His only stipulation: it had to be spent keeping the town "beautiful."

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"While some rich donors dictate how gifts will be spent, Owen left the Sid Vale Association free rein, and they’re spending it in all sorts of ways: a new roof for the 200-year-old cricket club; a trip for two girls to a Scouts jamboree in Sweden; a racing rowboat. And bulbs everywhere, in more than 40 plots," writes the Ottawa Citizen's Tom Spears.

"He didn’t particularly say that's what we had to do," Neville Staddon, treasurer of the Sid Vale Association (SVA), said. "He said, 'Think outside the box. Plant a million bulbs.'"

Owen's mother retired in Sidmouth. And even though he eventually settled in Ottawa and took Canadian citizenship, the England-born man routinely returned to Sidmouth to visit his mother.

When she died in 2000, he inherited her apartment, the National Post reports.

"Keith lived in Canada and had travelled around the world. But he fell in love with Sidmouth," Owen's only sibling, his brother Gordon, said in 2007. "Our mother retired there and he used to visit her a lot. He did not have any children or family so he left everything to Sidmouth.'"

Owen, who was divorced, approached the Sid Vale Association when he was dying of lung cancer and had just three months to live. He shared his generous plan to preserve the town's historic character and swore everyone to secrecy until after his death.

"The first time I met him was when he asked for us to visit him to discuss his will. He told us he was ill and that he had some money he wanted to leave us," Rev. Handel Bennett, SVA president and chairman of the Keith Owen Fund, told the Telegraph.

"I thought it would be in the range of a few hundred thousand, so when he told us it was more than a million we were very shocked. He loved Sidmouth so much, he wanted to leave enough money to ensure it could be preserved."

"He didn’t want us to say that was just Keith Owen who did it. He wanted to involve other people as well to encourage local philanthropy," Staddon told the Ottawa Citizen.

"The town council and everyone involved is really thrilled about this and it helps to bring the community together," John Hollick, Sidmouth town council chairman, told BBC News.

Handel Bennett, from the SVA, agreed: "We have got a lot of voluntary groups and people within the community, which is exactly what Keith would have wished — that people get together to do something for their own town."