Toronto mobilizes to save an oak tree older than Canada

The municipality wants to buy the house, raze it and create a public space around the tree, but the coronavirus pandemic has come to complicate its plans.

The towering American Red Oak, which could be 300 years old, dominates the North York neighborhood in the north of the metropolis. It is one of the oldest trees in the country's largest city, which has a metropolitan area of ​​some six million people.

A vestige of a secular forest, the tree is now located in the middle of a housing estate, placed in the garden of a private property. Its trunk, immense, is 5 meters in circumference and brushes the back facade of a house built in the 1960s. In summer, its long and heavy branches cover it almost entirely.

A cohabitation that has worked for a long time. But in recent years, a new owner has expressed concern about the costs of maintaining the tree, and is concerned that its roots have become a threat to the structure of the house.

Some neighbors fear that one day the specimen will perish or be swept away by a storm. To protect it and make it accessible to everyone, the city council voted in 2018 to buy the property, raze the house and transform the land into a small public park.

"The Rolls of the trees"

Long negotiations led to an agreement last year between the city and the current owner for a buyout of the property.

An outcome that delights Edith George, a resident of the neighborhood who has fought passionately for 14 years to preserve this oak, whose beauty, she says, is "breathtaking".

"It's the Rolls-Royce of trees," says the XNUMX-year-old retiree.

It is estimated that the tree is between 250 and 300 years old - or even more - and that it can still live, under good conditions, at least two more centuries.

“A tree like that is expensive to maintain. If it is a public place, the city will be able to take better care of it than I do,” admits Ali Simaga, the owner since 2015. “I don't want to be selfish either and the keep for myself alone. "

But the deal is not yet done. Because the municipality has set a condition for the purchase of the land: that half of the amount be provided by the population via private donations.

In December 2019, she launched a fundraiser and gave herself until the end of 2020 to raise 430.000 Canadian dollars (approximately 270.000 euros).

After a promising start, marked by a pledge of $ 100.000 by a couple of local philanthropists, fundraising was slowed down by the Covid-19 pandemic.

By mid-July, around $ 125.000, or nearly 30% of the expected sum, had been collected. If the total cannot be raised by December 12 and without an extension of the fundraiser, the money received will be used to support tree planting programs in the city, leaving the future of this historic oak tree to the conditional.

A plaque in his honor

This is near the Portage of Toronto, a former major trade route once used by Native Americans and then by European settlers, explains Madeleine McDowell, a local historian.

The trail connected Lakes Ontario and Simcoe, connecting the region to the Great Lakes. The larger trees were used as "landmarks" by travelers.

North York oak is a "remnant" of this forest, she says. And he was probably already big when the city of York, the ancestor of Toronto, was established by the British near Lake Ontario in 1793.

"It is an extraordinary tree that is part of the heritage of Toronto and of Canada," said Manjit Jheeta, director of the City of Toronto Partnership Office. "And it tells the story of our country," she adds.

Last year, the city of Toronto unveiled a plaque in his honor, a first for a tree in the metropolis. Its ecological value is not lower either: oak alone retains more than 11 tonnes of carbon.

“When horrible things happen, I don't go to a church, I come here. This tree is my cathedral,” says Edith George. "He's a survivor. He gives us hope for our planet which is in peril."