Village Squire, 1976-05, Page 11REQUIEM FOR THE ELM
The giant, graceful elms are just a memory now.
BY KEITH ROULSTON
Spring on the farm wherre I grew up, didn't
mean the same things as in many other
places. For many people it meant maple
syrup time when the every -present maple
tree gave off its sweet nectar for man to turn
into sweet heavenly liquid.
But the maple was a poor cousin in our
neighbourhood. There were a few maples iA
the back woodlots (we called them bushes)
but the tree that dominated the landscape
was the giant elm
I drove down that concession the other day.
Something seemed strangely wrong. I'd
remembered this place from childhood as a
lush example of Ontario countryside. Now it
seemed barren. Finally it came to me: the
elms were gone.
Dutch Elm Disease swept through this part
of Ontario like a plague. We heard about it
coming. I can remember driving through the
countryside miles from where we lived and
seeing the advancing lines of the disease,
ahead of it green, behind dull brown. When
the disease was still miles away we hoped it
would be stopped somehow before it reached
our township. It wasn't of course. First the
leaves on a single branch would turn yellow,
then it would spread to the rest of the tree and
then one spring we'd wait for the first tender
shots of the new leaves but they just wouldn't
come.
First one tree would die, then like a
creeping shadow another would go and then
another.
All kinds of secret remedies were
propounded and tried. People drove special
nails into the trunks of the trees after they
heard that this had been a miracle cure on
such and such a farm. They did this and they
did that. It didn't work.
Our front yard was dominated by two
young elms standing only a couple of feet
apart, like timid twins afraid to be too far
away from one another. They're gone now.
Our front field was centred by a
huge, graceful and unusual tree. The rugged
trunk of the tree was nearly six feet through
the centre. The branches spread out to the
side for 25 feet on either side of the trunk.
Willow -like, they wept almost to the ground
unlike most elm trees that grew straight up
before branching out in a little tuft of foliage.
The tree was my father's joy, the symbol of
his farm. Its gone now too.
Gone too are the big elm in the pasture
field, the one that stood by the roadside not
far from our gate, the long row of elms that
marked the boundary -line between two
neighbours farms across the road from u'
The branches, once covered with leaves, now stand bare against the sky.
VILLAGE SQUIRE/MAY 1976, 9