When I first visited Toronto 50 years ago, I was impressed that it was easy to drop down into one of the Ravine Parks and the city disappeared to be hidden by trees, and now that I am actually sort of living in Toronto I am impressed with the amount of trees in the city. Most streets except the very major ones have trees along them and there are parks full of trees scattered around the city. The condo we live in has a little forest of trees beside one of the buildings and when we look in every direction from our balcony there are patches of green.
50 Trees waiting to move |
But any city can always use more trees to provide shade and clean the air. So, when we got an e-mail announcing a moving forest it certainly peeked our interest. On a nice sunny, warm Saturday afternoon fifty trees comfortably planted in shopping carts were going to be wheeled through the downtown from an inner-city park down to the waterfront.
Volunteers waiting to move the forest |
So, we bowed out of helping a niece unpack from a recent move to Toronto and took Public Transit down to find this event. Sure enough, we found fifty shopping carts with a variety of tall 10 foot trees waiting outside a community centre with volunteers in bright Yellow shirts eager to transport them through the city.
We probably could have volunteered to actually be the chauffeur for one of the trees, but we did not find out about the event in time, so we just followed along on the forest’s journey. This moving forest travelled slowly through the city and stopped at locations along the way to provide needed shade to areas of the city that needed it. The forest spent some time exploring the Bentway, the concrete park under the elevated Gardner Expressway which certainly could be improved with a few trees. Finally two hours later the trees ended up on the Toronto waterfront where I believe they will be planted in locations around Toronto where a bit more green will improve the neighbourhoods.
Everyone ready to go |
I was surprised to hear about a moving forest, but in Toronto almost anything can be expected and this was a fun and interesting event.
The story of the Moving Forest Greening the Bentway End of the route; the Toronto waterfront