The city of Guelph’s transit expansion plan came at the expense of several mature trees near Carden Street in downtown Guelph. Despite the 2010 official plan which calls for trees to be “retained to the fullest extent possible” and “integrated into proposed developments”, the construction of the new transit hub resulted in the removal of over 20 mature trees in the area.
Six people from GUFF initiated an action to help save one of the remaining trees - a mature oak - by chaining five bicycles to it in an effort to delay the removal and raise awareness. We even placed phone calls into property owners who wanted to keep the trees and one owner provided his surveillance camera near the site as a tool to capture the event. (We now have a time lapse video of the action.)
Sadly the tree was removed despite our efforts, but attention was brought to the issue that took place on this street.
We still have a lot of work to do: The street is now barren and will be incredibly hot during the summer and the walls of a hotel and several stores that were once shielded by these trees are now completely exposed. Over 20 mature trees were taken down to accommodate the construction machinery. Still what we did really helped highlight the issue and we have a better idea of how to make this type of action stronger in the future.
We were advised of this tree removal one day before it was happening and though we didn’t have time to do a press release we still contacted the press once the bikes were secured. We sent the intention to protest with bikes via email to locally known activists, but it was a week night and school/work schedules are not easy to re-arrange on so little notice.
We contacted leaders of environmental groups and a writer of our local paper who had done environmental reports in the past and the action received media attention: a full article and interview with members of GUFF and representatives from the city was published in the Guelph Mercury, a local newspaper.
If we had known sooner we could have had many more bikes around the trees. Lots of activists said they would have supported this with their bikes overnight if they had known sooner. We needed about 8 bikes at least to truly make the action effective – but we will do it again sometime. Definitely worth it!
This story originally appeared on the Urban Forest Stewardship Network Website, an online resource for organizations, community groups and individuals working on urban forest initiatives across Ontario. It is a platform for sharing experiences and resources, and for capacity building. LEAF is leading the development of this network with support from Ontario Power Generation.