Brett Enemark

BRETT ALLAN ENEMARK (1948-2017) On World Poetry Day, March 21, peace came to Brett, surrounded by closest family members. Second son of Spike and Margaret Enemark, Brett was born and raised in Prince George, B.C., returning to work there on several occasions as a surveyor. A Ph.D. student of Interdisplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University, Brett taught film, specializing in early Canadian cinema. He subsequently found his most satisfying work teaching a writing group and editing a newsletter at the Burnaby Mental Wellness Centre, a drop-in centre for persons facing mental health issues. A Renaissance Man, Brett early on wrote poetry and edited Iron, a poetry magazine. He was a talented visual artist, returning to it full-time in his final year at the Powell River Brain Injury Centre. Brett made bread, as his Grandmother and Mother had taught him, up until his final health challenge and joked, when his speech was playing tricks on him, that he could still open a pizza parlour. In his thirties, he delighted in applying his surveying skills to building roads for the Nicaraguan Revolution & collected "copy" for many short stories while building roads in Tumbler Ridge and other points in North East B.C. Always a "leftie", Brett did his time as a somewhat reluctant steward in the BCGEU. When facing health challenges in his last 15 years of life, Brett frequently remarked that he had never expected to live past thirty, but that he was so grateful for his life with loving wife Candace (which commenced when he was 42), and his good fortune to become a father (at 48), of two daughters, the Lights of his Life: Lucy in 1996 and Marta in 1998. His first brain tumour came 4 years later, but he never let the challenge of six recurrent brain operations, and the development of a seizure disorder, slow him down. With his girls, he made a beautiful playhouse on stilts in the back yard, after his first surgery, and continued to build trellises, lay hardwood floors, build decks and remodel the kitchen, and anything else that needed to be built or repaired. Although he always remained modest about his ability to make anything, his contributions to the households in East and North Vancouver, then Powell River, were continuous (e.g., at least one bookcase in every room). His only expressed regret was that he had never finished his novel, but he still hoped to sail at his new home in Powell Riviera, recalling his earliest happy times at the family cabin on Cluculz Lake, sailing and canoeing. Brett valued his many close friends in the poetry, mental health, law and Brainiac community, who have been a great source of comfort to Candace, Lucy and Marta. Brett is survived by his mother, Margaret, brothers Gordon (Peggy) and Tex (Sandi), sister-in-law Marianne and nieces and nephews Delia and Adrienne (John), Kiersten (Fred), Tasha (Peter) and Ashleigh, Blake (Alexa) and Bret, Goddaughters Alexandra and Jacqueline Renate Candace, loving cousins, great nephews and great niece. The family wishes to thank Dr. A. Mutat, who performed all of Brett's brain operations with kindness and skill, Dr. A. Howard, his neuropsychiatrist over approximately 11 years (ever supportive and available), and the empathetic and skilled nurses at the ICU at Lions Gate Hospital, who cared for Brett in his last three weeks as he fought meningitis, but succumbed to a stroke. In lieu of flowers, donations would be appreciated to the Powell River Brain Injury Society at 101-7020 Duncan St., Powell River, B.C. V8A 1V9 or through Paypal on their website: www.braininjurysociety.ca Karin Reinhold read Rilke to Brett in the hospital. Rilke's aphorism about Loss, as translated by Karl Siegler, follows: "One must never despair when something is lost: a person or a joy or a blessing; everything returns with a magnificence even greater. What must fall off, falls away; that which belongs to us, stays with us, for everything proceeds according to its own laws which surpass our understanding, and with which we merely appear to be in discord. One must live within oneself and think upon all of life, all of its millions of possibilities, distances and futures, against which nothing shall prevail that is either past or lost." Celebrations of Life will be planned for the late summer in Vancouver and Powell River.