O O Ø O O O O
Sway
In support of small trees.
On Sunday, September 28, Hurricane Juan meandered through Halifax, catching most of its inhabitants mildly off guard. Prior to Juan’s arrival, the predictions had been that it would make landfall further up the coast toward Cape Breton. We expected wind and rain, but nothing like the storm Juan turned out to be. Halifax took it in the teeth.
Early Monday morning, after a power-less night lit blue with flashing transformers, my neighbourhood was serenely quiet. Unshowered North Enders were walking around with cameras in hand, surveying the damage.
Fifty feet from my front door, an elderly elm had received the worst of it. Its considerable girth blocked the entire street, its canopy yawned over several battered vehicles, and its massive root ball had forced up several huge segments of the sidewalk. Like this:
Fuller Terrace, Monday September 29, 2003
This scene was repeated throughout the city, with felled trees separating homes from their power lines, and car owners from their insurance deductibles.
Worst hit were Halifax’s two main parks: the Public Gardens and Point Pleasant Park. Of the former, the carefully manicured plants and flowers were a mere memory, and numerous large trees planted over a century ago were destroyed. Of the latter, between a quarter and a third of the park’s 75 acres of spruce, pine and birch trees were blown down in great swaths, like a sloppy crop circle. Some estimates say 20,000 trees came down.
And your point is?
As the cleanup continues, these details of the damage wrought by Juan are beginning to fade. Hand-wringing by local residence, however, continues apace. “Oh, all those beautiful old trees...” “Those won’t regrow in my lifetime,” “The city will never be the same,” “This affects my quality of life.”
But it’s a vain generation that believes all those trees are there for them.
Yes, it’s tragic that the trees are gone. They were pleasant and useful. (As an opponent of the carbon tax, I have to be a proponent of trees, or “carbon-sucking-rods,” as Kjell and I like to call them.)
New trees become old trees. While they’re growing, it’s okay that they’re not as big, or as majestic as we all might like. For a phenomenon that takes decades to measure, the pleasure has to be derived from knowing that they will grow, not in passing judgement on their height. Satisfaction has to come from creating something that will some day be great, not solely in enjoying what our predecessors have planted.
Repairing the Public Gardens, redeveloping Point Pleasant Park, and replanting the countless damaged trees throughout Halifax can be gestures where we know for certain that we will be leaving the place better off than what we inherited. We can’t say this often.
And here’s the problem with a street lined with towering old trees: they all die at the same time. Then you’re left with the unsavoury and unpopular task of cutting them down and replacing them all at once with saplings.
Here, Halifax has been given an opportunity to replace patches of old growth with young trees, without having to do entire streets at a time. Property damage aside, that’s not such a bad thing.
Trees fall. Plant new ones.
Evan Spence
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
PD DCXXI