New trees for Bancroft park

By Jake Storey

To celebrate Arbour Day, representatives from Hydro One's forestry department planted a pair of small maple trees in Bancroft's Millennium Park. In addition, they handed out ready-to-plant saplings to visitors, free of charge in order to spread the green for spring.

There were more than 100 white spruce saplings given out to more than 30 people throughout the day. They also gave out Forestry Tips and informed people how they could find out more about being more environmentally friendly.

According to Clay Ives, a Hydro One representative at the park, teams like his visited more than 30 locations in Ontario this year, in honour of Arbour Day. "Every year, all around the world, we celebrate Arbour Day and it's the celebration of trees that obviously give us oxygen and provide a million different things that we need. Ecology, food, places for birds and animals to live," said Ives. Ives has performed this task in the area every year for the past decade.

In previous years, the event has been held at a local public school where trees are given to the children. "When we go to a school, it's great. There's a whole presentation that goes on about the importance of trees and the roles they play in our eco-system. They provide the livelihood for a lot of our communities, because logging is a job for a lot of people around here. We also talk about electrical safety awareness when there's downed power lines."

This year the decision was made to donate trees to the local park instead. Ives said that as they had been trimming out the town of Bancroft this year, as a means to keep the power lines safe and maintained, it felt like the best option. "Every year we try to plant trees in the community where we have done the work. Normally we do a public school but this year we thought it was fitting to give back to the community and let people know that we do love trees. So that was our way of letting people know that we don't just cut down trees for the fun of it and we want to put some trees back into the community," said Ives.

The team stressed that although the removal of trees and vegetation is a major part of their job, the do their best to leave trees where they are. Preventative maintenance is necessary for safe and reliable power. "We do understand that there has to be sort of a beautification of Bancroft as well, so we do our best to leave trees around the hydro lines but trim them every eight to 10 years. We hope that these trees last here for years and become a nice part of the community," said Ives.

With each tree given away, came an advisory. Don't plant the trees around power lines, or they'll just make more trouble for later. "When we give the trees away, we tell everyone that there's a right tree for the right place," said Ives.