ROADSIDE TREES ~
"...a human-made element of rural Ontario. They give articulation to a landscape where the next highest field feature may be the fence post. Roadside trees are not the remnants of clearing but were consciously reintroduced...amid the widespread belief that trees 'for shade and oranment' contributed to the virtue of country life. Poets were aroused by the frightening prospect of a treeless landscape, and Arbor Day plantings became regular spring events at country schools late in the nineteenth century.
"Farmers pointed out that shade and beauty did not increase their income, and we read in Canada Farmer's Sun of the resident who cut down his line of non-productive forest trees. The journalist urged others, as a compromise, to plant nut trees at the roadside. Shade benefited church-goers, weary travellers, and sweaty kine on sultry August afternoons. It did not matter that such trees did not grow ramrod straight for the satisfaction of lumber merchants. As for the romantics, the play of light and shadow through basswood or hemlock added immeasurably to the maturing landscape."
~ LOOKING FOR OLD ONTARIO, Thomas F. McIlwraith, University of Toronto Press, 1997.
[Tomorrow: Beginning in 1883 municipalities could pay farmers for planting roadside hardwood trees]
