Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1988-03-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1988. PAGE 5. It's spring and the trees are falling Tree planting must be started now to prevent barren streets, writer urges M i r /MwlSSfi w"ill .. • • DRIVE r' , SLOWLY HI As the sign says, it is indeed a dead end as workmen cut many of the stately trees that have shaded Huron County streets for more than a century. People have to start planting now if we don't want our streets bare as the prairies, a writer says. BY SWEET GRASS If you are not alarmed by the loss of trees in your community, -- you are of a growing minority. Trees are coming down all around you. Many are falling to the cutters saw and axe because of age. A tree like all living things ago. In many of the pictures displayed around your community at the time of the centennial celebrations, you saw street scenes ofperhapslOOyearsago. Did you notice the size of the trees? With the rare exception the street scenes of 100 years ago, showed trees that were no larger than a man’s arm, and were probably notallerthan 15to20feet tall. Those trees in the pictures were at least 20 years old, in the founding years of your communities. Add one hundred years to the young trees in those early street scenes, and you now have trees that are passing from mature to overmature status. There has never been hard statistics formedto say a tree should live a certain number of years. Like humans, the tree has Forum FORUM is a feature of The Citizen which attempts to bring different points of view from area residents to the fore. It is designed to stimulate discussion. FORUM will appear once a month in The Citizen. If you have a topic you would like to contribute 1,000 to 1,500 words about, please contact the editor. Letters to the editor in reply to the ideas expressed in Forum are also welcomed. does reach maturity and eventually old age. Most of the trees gracing our boulevards, in towns and villages in Huron County, may be fast approaching what the Ontario Shade Tree Council refers to as overmaturity. Centennials have been celebrated in many communities in Huron County over a decade always been plagued by deadly organisms. Some trees live to be regal old guardians of a country road, some wither and die quite young. There are some humans, who live to celebrate one hundred birthdays, some are blessed with add-on years to their 100th celebration. Sotrees like humans can reach a stage of venerable “oldies”, while others fall to an early demise. Construction of new buildings sometimes end the tree’s life, simply because the tree happened to be in the way of the new construction, however scars of lawn mowers bumping tender bark, snow removal, and road salt also take their tolls. In April of 1987, June Rowlands, a member of Toronto city council and Metro council member declared in an interview about tree cutting in Metro, “it’s easier to put up a building, than it is to chop down a tree”. Metro has adopted a very rigid attitude against slaughtering trees need­ lessly. Sidewalk construction is not enough of an excuse to cut down a tree — certainly not. They just have to go around it,” commented Rowlands. In London, landscape architect David Thompson was so disturbed by the declining tree population, that he was instrumental in setting up a foundation called Trees For London, in 1984. The foundation has used donations to plant over 700 trees in London, since incorporation. In a small town in Nebraska, in the year 1872, another man by the name of J. Sterling Morton, was concerned about the lack of trees in his area. Morton conceived the idea of Arbor Day, and encouraged schools and local community groups to hold tree planting ceremonies. So was born Arbor Day. Although Arbor Day fell out of favour just before World War II, there was a renewed interest in Arbor Day tree plantings following the onslaught of Dutch Elm disease during the 1960’s. Now Arbor Day is celebrated each spring in cities, towns, and villages across Canada and the United States. Sarnia, London, and Stratford hold official tree plantings on a declared Arbor Day, between April 24 and May 29 each year. In London, the P.U.C. cut some 700 trees a year and spend between $75,000.00 and $100,000.00dollars a year on new plantings. Maurice Chapman, parks director for the London P.U.C., says that London is some eight years behind schedule on tree plantings. Huron County municipalities may also be behind schedule, however the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority, has this year (1988), offered young trees to concerned municipalities at a nominal fee, in an effort to establish more tree plantings within the Maitland watershed. In the Village of Blyth, council is carrying on a program of free tree plantings started in 1962. This year there will be an effort to expand the program, by offering a broader selection of tree specie. More flexibility in planting trees by the council of Blyth, willbetried for the first time. It has been realized that at times tree plantings have been restricted to locations that are neither desired by resident or the snow plow operators, nor has the restriction been sensiblefor the health of the tree. Final plans for the new flexibility are not complete butitisthoughtthat a setback from the property line, onto the private property of 10 to 20 feet may be considered. Keeping an alignment with the restriction of structures now in place will be of concern, boulevard plantings in these circumstances will be done at councils designation. The attempt in offering a broader spectrum or variety of trees for planting in your community, stems from experience of communities who have had a reliance on one or two varieties only. In many Eastern U.S. cities after the demise of the Elm trees, there was a scramble for a cheap, fast growing replacement. The Honeylocust was the choice but along came another blight scale, a microscopic insect blown by the wind. Chicago was particularly hard hit, they had Continued on page 24 The International Scene The Russians - a vanishing breed BY RAYMOND CANON I was sitting on a park bench in one of the numerous Parks of Rest and Culture that one finds in the Soviet Union when a man came and sat on the same bench. I must say that when I was in the Soviet Union, I could count on one hand the number of times that somebody spoke to me first but this was one of them. After looking me over, he decided to risk a question and so asked me where I was from. It was obvious from my dress that I was not a resident or at least not a permanent resident of the Soviet Union but I really think he was surprised to find out that he was talking to someone from Canada. We carried on a conversation, the usual kind when you are trying the other out. He made it very clear early on that he was not really a Russian, rather an Estonian and asked me if I knew where Estonia was. I replied in the affirmative and thus the reason for this article. We tend to think of everybody living in the Soviet Union as Russians and collectively that may be so. However, when it comes to describing their ethnic origin, only about one-half of the residents of that country may really be con­ sidered as Russian, the other half are made up of over a dozen non-Russian groups, some of which, like the Ukranians, speak a language which is very close to Russian. The others, such as my Estonian friend, have a native tongue which is not even close to Russian. Perhaps the most interesting from a Canadian point of view, are not only the Estonians but also the Latvians and Lithuanians since a considerable number of these have settled in Canada and have managed to hang on to their culture and language quite well. They form the three Baltic countries opposite Sweden who were quite independent until Stalin decided that he wanted them to form part of the Soviet Union. He marched in, as he did in Poland, Czechoslo­ vakia, Finland and Roumania and took parts of their country. In the caseofthethreeBalticstates, it wasn’t part of it but all of it. These three peoples have a history of diligence and it is not surprising that they are in the vanguard of Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika or restructuring of the Russian economy. However, the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union that disturb the Kremlin are to the east, not to the west of the Russian capital. The birth rate in some of these non-Russian republics is so high in comparison to the Russian one that there is the distinct possiblity that they may soon make up somewhat more than half the entire popula­ tion. What is just as much if not more of a problem, however, at the present time is the amount of corruption and nepotism that is to be found there. It has, in fact, become so much a way of life that, as soon as Moscow started to try to crack down on it as one way to make the economy more efficient, it ran into a great deal of resistance. This has led to the firing of some of the local bosses and putting in reliable Russians in their place. I think you can imagine that this has not gone down too well with the local talent and there have been a number of riots or near-riots. Apart from that, how do you get the place to run efficiently when you are an outsider and your chief job is breaking up all the cosy arrange­ ments which have contributed so dramatically to the inefficiency of the past? The Kremlin would like to know the answer to this question very much. One example of the problem will suffice. It was recently reported in a Moscow newspaper that one strongman in the republic of Uzbekistan of running a slave camp of some 30,000 people, of having his own private army and of whipping and branding pregnant women. The same republic has also been accused of ripping off Moscow in the handling of the cotton harvest to the tune of 4 billion roubles. All this makes Michel Cote and his $250,000 loan look quite tame.