Random Access

When Erin Bearse was born 22 years ago, her parents planted a tree to mark her birth outside the home that her great-grandfather had purchased when Applewood Acres was first developed by Gordon Shipp,
When Erin’s sister Amie was born nearly 28 years ago and her brother Michael was born nearly 26 years ago, maple trees were planted for them in the front yard of the family’s home on Greening Ave.
Because it was getting crowded in the front yard, Erin’s “birth tree” was planted behind the house in the hydro right-of-way.
Sometime later this week, even though “her” maple tree is no more than 25 ft. tall and seems no threat whatsoever to the 230,000 volt-transmission lines that tower above it, Hydro One plans to chop down the tree.
A total of seven trees have been marked on the right-of-way behind the Bearse home, which is just east of Stanfield Rd. across the hydro field from St. Edmunds School.
“There’s a small white pine that is no more than five ft. tall,” Bearse (pronounced Beers) says as she provides a tour of what is soon to become demolition alley. A couple of hundred metres east, the chainsaws are already whirring.
When a huge chestnut tree in the backyard of one of the neighbours got too big and messy, it was removed. Bearse rescued a seedling that was growing nearby and planted it in the right-of-way just behind her house. That’s the tree she is sitting under in the photo.
Yesterday, when she saw the big orange H marks on the trees which pronounced their death sentences, Bearse responded by writing a little personal note about each tree and duct-taping it to them for the forestry crews.
“My note about the chestnut explained how I planted it when I was 11 years old,” she says.
When Hydro One wanted to cut down 25-30 per cent of the trees in the same corridor five years ago, Bearse’s father George alerted Mississauga South MPP Margaret Marland and most of the trees were saved.
Hydro has safety concerns about trees that infringe on the 15 ft. safety zone below the huge wires.
Al Manchee, spokesman for Hydro One, said this afternoon that, “the intent is to remove all trees that will eventually threaten the lines.” There was an agreement made in the 1970s, Manchee believes, which did protect certain trees along the corridor, which cannot be removed. They are trimmed instead.
The fact that agreement exists severely undermines the credibility of hydro’s current clear-cut policy. It’s exactly why Larry Steinman and the residents of Lorne Park are fighting so hard to have a huge red maple tree, a clear candidate for the new heritage trees program that is being launched in Ontario, trimmed rather than chopped.
When the chain saws started along the right-of-way this week, residents came out of their homes in Sherway, Applewood Acres and everywhere else along the line to question the wisdom of the chainsaw massacree.
Dave Ross, who lives on Wiseman Crt. in Park Royal was incensed. “They’re tree killers,” he said of hydro. “They are removing all of these nine, ten and 12-ft. trees because they say they are dangers to these lines that are hundreds of feet tall,” Ross said. “They’ve just butchered everything.”
Manchee says residents can come out to a meeting Sept. 10, place and time to be announced, where they can have input into the landscaping plans Hydro One is developing for the new trees it intends to plant to replace the ones that are being removed. The news species will not pose a future danger to the lines because they won’t grow as tall. They include magnolia, hawthorn, cranberry, cedar and, irony of irony, apples.
It’s unlikely residents of streets such as Russet Dr., Snow Cr., MacIntosh Cres., Courtland Cr., Melba Rd. etc. will be in a laughing mood.
In Applewood Acres, where families like the Bearses hand their homes down generation to generation and there is still a strong core of original families, there is a palpable sense of rage at the slaughter of vegetation on the right-of-way. “This place is like a time capsule,” says Erin Bearse. “They preach and preach to us about global warming and air quality and the environmental impact that trees have and they’re just coming in and taking them all down. If we don’t fight for them now,” she says, “there will be nothing left when my kids buy this house.”