DON'T CHOP: PLANT

I’ve kept a column by one of my favorite columnists, The Globe and Mail’s Elizabeth Renzetti, @lizrenzetti, writing about trees and how home owners might help fight climate change by planting even a single tree at their front or back yards.

What I learned from her, not that I live in Toronto, is you phone the city and ask for a tree.

Here’s what she wrote: “So when I called the City of Toronto to request a tree for the front yard, they asked what type I wanted?”

The message came back that the best tree for her yard was a Freeman maple. The columnist went on, “If you ask, the city will come and plant a tree on the bit of front lawn that it technically owns. For free.” I can only imagine Ms. Renzetti is looking out her front window now to see the maple already planted there.

What she was driving at was all of us must do our part in planting trees, shrubs. What Toronto is attempting to do, like many other cities, is reverse the damage done by urban expansion. Its forest strategy aims to have 40 per cent canopy by 2050. Currently, it’s 24 per cent.

This brings up what’s happening locally, here in Woodbridge. A local golf course of some 250-plus acres has been sold by The Toronto Board of Trade - who bought the farmland back in the 1960s - to a conglomerate of heavy-duty contractors.

It’s a magnificent portion of open, forested land with two 18-hole courses plus a separate nine holes. A river, the Humber, runs through a portion of it. Check out #KeepVaughanGreen

Author’s comment: The Feds have plans to put a stop to urban expansion that would sweep up open land. Bought by wealthy contractors that get away with buying up such land at whatever cost, and never staying around to see what damage they’ve done.

They’re off sucking up farmland elsewhere, killing off what is most important to most of us. Like trees and open spaces.