Vancouver, B.C.: Deciding the fate of a huge, dead tree in Stanley Park

Published 11:02 pm Sunday, January 18, 2009

VANCOUVER, B.C. — The fate of a hollow 1,000-year-old red cedar in Stanley Park, a popular attraction for more than a century before being reduced to a 46-foot stump by a windstorm in 2006, goes before the city Park Board on Monday.

The long-dead tree, about 20 feet across at its widest point and held upright by a tangle of metal braces and cables, took on a precarious tilt after the storm. Park officials, fearing it posed a danger to visitors, fenced it off and voted last March to cut it down.

Faced with a public outcry, the board reaffirmed its decision three months later, then agreed in July to delay taking it down while an independent engineering firm examined other options.

Now the board is set to consider recommendations from park staff for a plan to realign and stabilize the tree and to encourage the Stanley Park Hollow Tree Society to continue private fundraising. The group has collected $54,000 to date.

“I think it’s safe to say we will be supporting staff recommendations,” Park Commissioner Aaron Jasper said

In a meeting with the tree society last week, Jasper made it clear that he wouldn’t accept any plan that turned the tree into a monstrosity.

“I said I want to be very clear in my mind that you’re not turning this into a Frankentree, that this will still be a tree,” Jasper said.

He said he came away satisfied the end result will be far from a horror.

“Unless someone really looks closely and gets in there and walks around, people will not even know that this tree has had work done on it,” Jasper said.

Rising beside a windy road through the park, the tree has been a stopping point for countless visitors from around the world for more than a century.

“When you go anywhere in the world, what you want to see is what’s unique about a place — and when you live in a city like Vancouver, what makes you proudest of your city is what’s unique about it,” Bruce Macdonald of the tree society said.

Not all agree.

“There is a group out there that supports the idea that it should basically wither away,” said park board chairman Raj Hundal. “No money or energy should be put to this, let it just decompose.”

Hundal said he respects that view but disagrees with.

“I think it’s actually a place that people go and visit. It’s in Stanley Park, which is one of our jewels in the city. It definitely has a lot of prominence,” he said.

Macdonald said the view that there should be no interference with the natural process of deterioration of the tree is more than four decades too late.

“The park board put steel braces in it in 1965. It’s been artificially interfered with for a long, long time,” he said.