There's a glorious old beech tree on the Adamson Estate along the Lake Ontario waterfront that got a little bit of love this week.
The tree, some 10-12 metres (30-35 feet) high, predates the City of Mississauga (1974), the Town of Mississauga (1968) and the Township of Toronto (1805).
In fact, if you look really carefully at the old lady, who's getting a little weak as you might expect of someone her age, you can find the mark of the original surveyor of this whole area west of Toronto. The survey was done sometime around 1800-'01 as far as historians know.
The grand dame got a new skirt beginning Monday, when City forces began erecting a wrought iron fence at her drip line, where the rain falls off her outermost branches.
You can bet that fence is going to be prominent in a lot of future wedding albums. Newly-married couples love to use the Adamson Estate as a leafy background to the photos for their special day and the tree is an especially popular backdrop.
The fence is serving two purposes. It is keeping people away from the base of the tree to reduce the risk of injury should any branches come loose.
Unfortunately, it is also serving another purpose: trying to dissuade people like the lunkheads who tried to burn it down last May 16.
A group of people, presumably teenagers trying to confirm the research that says their brains will not be fully formed for several more years, lit a fire in the middle of the rather cavernous hollow that has developed in the main trunk.
The decayed material inside caught fire, of course. The tree could have been destroyed, as many others have been, because a fire in such a circumstance uses the inside the trunk as a chimney and often weakens it to the point that it must be taken down.
However, quick action by Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services put out the smoldering blaze and saved the tree.
"The tree's structural integrity is declining," says Gavin Longmuir of the City's forestry department, "and we're trying to sustain it as long as we can."
This tree and others such as two magnificent Bur Oak trees that were preserved a few years ago on the Meadowvale GO Station lands because of diligence by City staff and co-operation from the developer would seem to be ideal candidates for a new process that is seeing municipalities pass bylaws to officially designate heritage trees.
Scarborough has designated trees in Highland Creek and Alliston has anointed a 175-year-old Bur Oak on a downtown street.
The Ontario Heritage Tree Alliance has developed a draft "toolkit" to be completed later this year which will allow communities to identify and designate trees. It's working with the Ministry of Culture to try to establish a province-wide registry of such trees.
We are finally starting to realize that heritage consists of whole streetscapes, including trees and not just bricks and mortar.
Isn't this beech appropriate to be the first Mississauga tree to earn such a distinction?
It's an historic tree on public property on our waterfront, bearing the mark of the first vestiges of settlement here and a survivor of teen terrorism.
If that's not a living legacy, what is?