And They Shall Bloom No More

By Hugh Stephens

With spring just around the corner, James Bay residents will be looking forward to the spectacular splash of colour that brightens up our neighbourhood as the Japanese cherries and other flowering trees come into bloom. Two particularly beautiful old specimens used to greet me, just in front of the Victoria Clipper terminal on Belleville Street, as I made my almost daily trek downtown. They were gnarled and bent like old men, yet each spring yielded a harvest of bright pink, one slightly creamier than the other.

Recently, as residents may have noticed, the City has been putting in improvements along Belleville, widening the sidewalk and building a concrete stairway down to the Clipper terminal. No doubt this represents progress, but one day as I skirted the work in progress, I noticed that something was missing. The old trees were gone! Closer inspection revealed two muddy stumps in the ground, cut off at ground level. I felt a pang of sadness, and anger, as if I'd lost two old friends. Yes, they were slightly closer to the new widened sidewalk than to the previous one, but surely they could have been accommodated.

I wrote to the City, and expected to hear nothing. To my surprise I got a call from the parks department, explaining that they'd hoped to save the trees, but they were infected with tortrix moth. This is a blight that is destroying flowering Japanese cherries throughout the Pacific Northwest. I was told the trees, while still producing a gorgeous mantle each spring, likely had only 5-7 years of life left. They will be replaced eventually with new cultivars, Japanese cherries and maples. Maybe it had to come to this. In my heart of hearts, I admit that I am unconvinced and sad to see my friends go. Perhaps this is the price of progress; perhaps it is just the passing of one generation to the next. But just as there is now a hole in the streetscape of Belleville, there is also a hole in my heart.