Write to Mayor Brian Patterson at mayor@cityofkingston.ca and demand responsible urban planning at the Tannery Lands. Please send a copy to tannerytrees@gmail.com.
Share your concerns with your local Councillor. Find Councillors’ emails here:
www.cityofkingston.ca/city-hal...
The 200 year-old white oak tree stands on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people.
“We share a common caring about the Standing Families called trees in your language. In the Indigenous world they are families standing in one place, the First Standing Families. They were here before us on Mother Earth. They gift us with oxygen every minute of their lives… Trees are life to me.” (Laurel Claus Johnson)
It is estimated that the oak was born in the early 1800s on land that was then part of the farm of one of Kingston’s first and most prominent settlers, Neil McLean, who died in 1795 and left the farm to his wife and family (Jennifer McKendry, Chronology of North King’s Town, Kingston, pp. 70-73).
The oak tree witnessed the colonization of Indigenous lands and the transition of this part of Kingston from orchard and farm to industrial use in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the opening of tanneries, the lead smelter, and the nearby Kingston Cotton Mill.
It would have been a young tree when the Rideau Canal was created and when the Kingston and Pembroke Railway was built a short distance away.
The oak has given shelter to those in need and is a food source for multitudes of birds, pollinators, insects and wildlife. Today its broad canopy and beautiful branches are loved and admired by people who walk along the K&P Trail. This white oak tree is priceless in terms of our City’s heritage and identity, the well-being of citizens, and the well-being of all the non-human living creatures taking shelter in its branches, leaves, and roots.
We need to protect and honour this tree. We also need to ask questions about the consequences for biodiversity and climate change mitigation of clearcutting more than 1800 trees.
Brownfields are not devoid of life.
The oak is located at 44.24438737, -76.48057569
Music: "Marble Machine (Piano Version)" by Wintergatan
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11 окт 2021
