If trees fall in Jane-Finch, who makes a sound?
Residents say they lack clout to fight crews that leave their lawns barren
Patricia Shaw has lived at Jane and Finch for more than 40 years, occupying a small house on a suburban street with a yard that was once thick with trees.
Hers is the other Jane and Finch, a quiet place of bungalows, cul-de-sacs and well-kept gardens that seems a world away from the low-rent apartment towers that dominate the skyline.
She and her friends consider their neighbourhood the city's best-kept secret. Homes are affordable by Toronto standards, and are surrounded by parks and green space.
But the suburban calm was shattered on a November morning last year. Ms. Shaw, an 81-year-old widow, awoke to find a 20-strong chainsaw-wielding work crew on her property.
They were there to cut down her trees, they said.
She had received notice that her yard was within 400 metres of a tree infested with the Asian long-horned beetle, an insidious bug that bores its way into maple, birch, poplar and other trees, killing its host. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been waging war on the beetle since it arrived in Canada in 2003, saying it threatens the urban tree canopy, as well as Canada's multibillion-dollar forestry industry.
Ms. Shaw was not prepared to see her healthy trees sacrificed for the greater good. She stood in the path of the chainsaw and refused to move.
"I said: 'This is my property. I'm not leaving,' " she recalled in an interview this week. "[The foreman] was right up in my face pointing with his finger. He said to me, 'If I get the police, you're gone, and it's not a pretty sight.' "
A former barrage balloon operator who survived nightly air raids during the Second World War, she said she'd never been so scared in all her life.
"I was going out of my mind. I said: 'Go ahead and call the police. It's my land.' "
Three squad cars were sent to her house. The police were sympathetic, but there was nothing they could do. The CFIA had the legal authority to start cutting.
By her count, she lost more than 50 trees that day. When it was all over, she stood in her kitchen, and felt the world start to spin.
"I went dizzy, my eye went black. I put my hand on the counter and it just slipped off and I fell and banged my head against the fridge," she said.
A neighbour found her lying on the kitchen floor, her front door swinging wide open.
She had suffered a heart attack, she said.
"Now my balance has gone. My hearing has gone. It's really tragic."
Throughout the winter, Ms. Shaw awoke to an absence. The trees that she and her late husband had planted together were gone.
"Every morning I would look out and it's just a mess of mud. It just broke my heart."
Ms. Shaw is one of several Jane-Finch residents who are upset by the way the CFIA has handled the beetle infestation.
It began in the city of Vaughan in 2003, when a beetle is believed to have arrived in a wooden packing crate from China. Other beetles were soon found in wooded areas nearby, and an eradication zone was established around Toronto's northern edges. The CFIA decided to cut down any potential host tree within 400 metres of an infested tree. Since 2003, more than 25,000 trees have been cut down -- more than 98 per cent of them healthy.
The Jane-Finch area alone has lost 2,000 trees on public and private property, which amounts to about a third of the trees in the neighbourhood's northwest.
"This is a devastating, ruthless insect," said Howard Stanley, the CFIA's spokesman on Asian long-horned beetles.
"It attacks and kills healthy trees. The host range is huge. Fifty to 70 per cent of the hardwood trees in our city and natural forest are threatened and could be killed. So we have to remove it. . . . The toll to our environment and the economy as a whole if we aren't successful would be quite dramatic."
The beetle was found in the Jane-Finch area in August of 2005. A community meeting was held and, as they prepared to leave that night, residents were told the cutting would begin the next day.
Roger Rowe, a prominent local lawyer who lost several trees, including a 40-year-old maple, said no other Toronto neighbourhood would have been treated with such disregard.
"Because we don't have any political clout, they took our trees," he said. "Why is it our community that has to pay yet again?
"The trees -- that's what makes neighbourhoods."
Richard Ubbens, head forester with the city of Toronto, agrees; trees do make neighbourhoods. They provide shade, shelter from the wind and, by their very nature, can have a calming effect that enhances community safety, something of paramount consideration in an area badly affected by violence.
But, Mr. Ubbens says, this beetle presents such a potent threat that it's better to be safe than sorry. The city is doing all it can to replant quickly, and with a diversity of trees that will be better able to withstand future pests, he added.
In Chicago and New York, similar infestations have been controlled with pesticides, which has meant thousands fewer healthy trees cut down. But pesticides are not a magic bullet, the CFIA's Mr. Stanley says.
"So far, taking what seems to be a more radical action has proved to be quite fruitful," he said. If no new signs of the beetle are found, the agency hopes to declare the bug defeated by late 2007.
Homeowners were promised $300 in compensation for every tree cut down on their property. Many of them say it's not enough. Ms. Shaw was compensated for about 20 trees, but she says about 20 smaller trees were counted as one hedge.
Residents have also felt the sting of rising property assessments that don't take into account their barren backyards, and have a letter from a professional arborist that says the loss of trees can mean a drop of 10 to 20 per cent in property values.
"I'm pretty disappointed that the mayor has not said boo during this process. It's inexcusable and scandalous," said John Balatinecz, a local resident and retired professor from the University of Toronto's forestry department.
"If this was happening in Rosedale or High Park, where they have hundred-year-old trees, I tell you there'd be some movement."
The infestation has not moved south of Highway 401. But if it does, Mr. Balatinecz said, residents in those areas will have to mobilize quickly to save their trees.
"It just hit us so fast. We weren't prepared," he said.