Amelie Beyries lives for right now

TORONTO Amelie Beyries has felt life slipping out of her grasp.

It first happened when she was diagnosed with cancer at 28 years old. Coming out of treatment, she thought everything would improve. Except it didn’t — it got worse. But 10 years later, the Montreal-raised singer is still here to tell her story. She considers that itself a victory.

“The great thing about being sick is you’re very conscious of your fragility,” she says while sipping a latte in a Toronto café.”

“You’re happy, you’re having coffee and it’s nice out. You’re feeling OK. Focus on that.”

Now at 37 years old she’s releasing Landing, her tender debut album under the name Beyries, pronounced Bay-riss.

It’s filled with melancholy songs, some which linger on the darkness of life’s most helpless hours, while others find a spark of hope in survival. Each track carries the emotional weight of a woman haunted by her pain.

She worked in the demanding, fast-paced public relations industry and had a comfortable loft in Old Montreal, steps from where she’d end a busy day by partying with colleagues and clients until last call. But the celebrations came to a grinding halt.

After visiting her doctor over worries about a lump in her breast, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and urged to start chemotherapy immediately. Seven months of treatment ended with a partial mastectomy and two months of radiation.

Those days weren’t easy, but Beyries remembers a renewed thirst for life. She put her job aside and bought a chalet away from the city for a bit of seclusion. The house gave her room to wheel in a baby grand piano inherited from her grandmother.

Sitting down at the piano she composed Soldier, a defiant story about severing ties with a soured relationship. Beyries played it for a couple of friends who shared it with their contacts in Quebec’s media industry. Hearing the buzz, a local fashion magazine chose to showcase the song alongside a feature story about breast cancer on its tablet app.

A few months later, she started feeling electrical shocks under her arm. Doctors told her the cancer was back.“I just know that it can stop at any time,” she says.

She’s now been in remission for six years.

When pressed for what’s next, Beyries says she’s written songs for a second album, but doesn’t like to think that far ahead.

“I’m trying to focus my mind on what’s going on right now.”