Our love affair with trees is fickle

We in Kamloops have an on-again off-again love affair with trees.

We love them, we love them not. We can’t make up our minds.

Each year on Arbor Day, people gather and make speeches about all the great things trees do for us — they give us shelter, purify the air we breathe and put food on our table, for our local economy would be very poor indeed without trees.

Yet we’re a fickle bunch. During and after the 2003 wildfires, we were urged to get rid of the trees that had been shading our homes for decades, lest they catch fire.

Then came the pine beetle invasion four years later, and we were in love with trees again, trying desperately to stop the tiny bug on its relentless march.

Homeowners sprayed their trees with insecticides, tacked pouches of repellant on them, and prayed. The effort failed for most, and we mourned the loss of our beautiful pines in yards and subdivisions.

Now we have the Royal Inland Hospital heritage trees, the Lloyd George elementary trees, and the St. Paul Street trees. At RIH, they’re talking about cutting them down as though the massive public protest that saved them from the chainsaw a dozen years ago never happened.

At Lloyd George and on St. Paul Street, they’re deemed a nuisance and a hazard by B.C. Hydro, which doesn’t yet understand the emotional attachment we have to trees.

But then, lots of people don’t get that. They’re just trees, after all. They can’t feel pain and if they’re in the way or they’re old, what’s the big deal about getting rid of them?

Actually, the issue of trees and pain isn’t as clearcut — if you’ll excuse the expression — as one might think. While trees don’t have brains, they’re capable of healing themselves when cut, and protecting themselves when insects attack.

I’m not onside with those who say that just because a tree can’t talk it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have feelings. Let’s face it, talking to trees is a waste of time — they have no ears.

But there’s no question trees give us a sense of well being, and do a lot for us. If we didn’t have trees we wouldn’t survive on this earth.

Despite that, it’s typically human that we love and protect them when it’s convenient, and discard them like an unwanted pet or a worn-out pair of shoes when it’s not.

The trees at RIH are old and will, in all likelihood, have to make way for progress, and I’m okay with that, but must we be so cavalier about it? And could Hydro, the City and school district at least tell people when their neighbourhood trees are about to be chopped down?

In our yard, we have one of those big old silver maples just like the one on St. Paul Street that was cut down this week. I have a picture of it taken in 1916 when, I’d guess, it was already about 15 to 20 years old, so it’s well into its second century of life.

It’s battered and gnarled and past its prime, but I love that thing. I’m in no rush to consign it to the woodpile, and when it’s time to say goodbye, I’ll miss it.