The Death of the Street Tree: The Elms of Winnipeg and Guelph
- Ryan Regier
- May 14
- 9 min read
Previously published on February 13th, 2020 on my Old Blog - https://awayofhappening.wordpress.com
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It’s become a bit of a running joke among my friends how much I love the city of Winnipeg. To them its a frozen city in the middle of nowhere that’s the butt of a lot jokes, but to me – ever since I first arrived there on a freezing cold January morning to find I was locked out because my landlord had given me the wrong keys and taken off on vacation to warmer temperatures – it’s the greatest city in Canada.
However, this blog post isn’t my “In defense of Winnipeg” masterwork that fundamentally alters how Canadians perceive their national geography (Keep an eye out for that though!). I just want to talk about one specific thing I love about Winnipeg here: The Trees.
Trees don’t do well in cities. Concrete compresses the soil and stops roots from expanding. Pollution stunts their growth and leaves them open to disease. In Canada they especially don’t do well because of the road salt over the winter. Come spring, leftover salt draws the incredibly important spring moisture out of a tree, deforming and essentially starving it to death. Ever wonder why you don’t see a lot of evergreen trees in downtown areas compared to leafy ones? No tree deals will salt that well, but it’s especially deadly to evergreens. Outside of cities (and away from humans) trees can live for a hundreds of years but in cities only about half of trees make it to 20.
It’s not that hard to find old trees in a city though, every city has a neighbourhood or two full of old, massive, beautiful trees. These trees have survived so long because the neighbourhood itself is old and isolated, allowing the trees to grow large hidden from the traffic of the city. Typically these neighbourhoods are also rich. Trees have survived so long because they haven’t been bulldozed and property owners have extra cash to make sure they are protected and taken care of. (Old tree neighbourhoods often are also indicators of class/race divides as shown in the opening scene of Jordan Peele’s Get Out)
What makes Winnipeg so stunning is that these old tree neighbourhoods are everywhere and they are not just the rich neighbourhoods. I lived in two different areas of Downtown during my time in Winnipeg and can vividly recall the sense of awe I would have walking down those streets, feeling like I was in an urban jungle, and thinking to myself “I can’t believe I get to live here”.
Why is Winnipeg so good at growing old trees? How does it manage to have so many of these “cathedral streetscapes” that are an urban heaven for wildlife? The answer is, of course, as Brent mentioned is his tweet above, the Elm Tree.
You might be somewhat aware of the tragic story of the legendary Elm. I don’t use the term ‘legendary’ lightly here. The Elm was the first real urban tree in North America and revolutionized the idea of bringing nature into public areas. It also led to a political revolution as well. The American Revolution began under the Liberty Tree in Boston. An American Elm (Ulmus americana) that became a gathering place for defiance and free discussion of ideas and politics. The protection, freedom, and liberty that Bostonians felt under its massive canopy changed the world.
The Elm was one of the few trees species that could survive whatever humans and technology could throw at it as our cities began to grow massive. In fact, it seemed to thrive along with us, growing tall and majestic. Whenever you duck under a tree to avoid the rain or let out a sigh of relief as you escape the hot sun under a tree’s cool shadow, know that it was the Elm that was the first shade-tree and helped make it clear that perhaps technology and nature need not be at odds but could exist together.
I’m waxing nostalgic a lot here, but after seeing – after living under- the urban forest of Elms in Winnipeg (the largest Elm forest in North America), I can’t help it. It’s a piece of forgotten history now, but the Elm was once so important and so recognizable in Canada that it appeared on the back of our 1954 $2 dollar bill. You can see the giant Elm on the right with the upward vase shape that created the cathedral streetscape effect.
What happened to the Elms in the rest of North America and why was Winnipeg spared? In what has now become a textbook example of one of perils of globalization and the risk invasive species pose, the Elm was wiped out by fungus know as Dutch Elm Disease (DED) that had come over in imported lumber from Europe in about 1930. The fungus passed quickly from tree to tree (conveniently lined up in nice rows), spread by tiny bark beetles. The fungus essentially causes the tree to kill itself in order to try and save itself from being completely consumed by the fungus. The tree blocks its own xylem (the “veins” that the tree uses to move water to its leaves – also know as wood!) to stop the fungus from spreading and soon there is no water moving in the tree and it becomes dead wood instead of a living thing.
Dutch Elm Disease soon spread across North America. Most of the Elm trees in Ontario were gone by the 1980s. There are no longer any Elm trees on Canadian Currency.
(An analysis of the full impact of the Dutch Elm Disease (DED) upon North America and Urban Forestry in general is a bit beyond the scope of this blog post. I encourage you to do some web searching, there is a lot of great information out there.)
The Winnipeg Elm forest has survived in large part thanks to it’s isolation from the world and the cold temperatures that slow down the bark beetle population. However, a lot of credit should also be given to the active citizens of Winnipeg (Especially The Coalition to Save the Elms, now known as Trees Winnipeg) that ensure tree-care best practices are followed and who remain ever vigilante for signs of DED.
Sadly the climate that has helped saved Winnipeg from DED might ultimately be its undoing as Climate Change worsens. An early winter storm this year- which has been called Tree Apocalypse by the locals – decimated a large number of Winnipeg Elms before they had a chance to prepare for winter and lose their leaves. The effects of this storm will likely get at lot worse come spring as DED takes advantage of all these weakened trees.
When I was living in Winnipeg I grew so used to being in the shade of Elms that it was a bit of shock coming to Guelph, Ontario and seeing barely any. Guelph is a tree city in its own right, with it’s University’s Arboretum being one of the best in Canada. However, it didn’t have the isolation + time to see DED coming and prepare like Winnipeg did. Guelph had a lot of elms and now they are all gone except for a small handful of survivors.
However, early on in my exploration of Guelph trees I stumbled upon a group of three big elms right near downtown Guelph that somehow survived Dutch Elm Disease. These elms are hiding behind the Guelph Farmer’s Market and alongside the Guelph Armoury. I’ve affectionately named them after the Bronte sisters. The name especially suits the middle one, Emily.
These trees are covered in what are essentially battle scars: dead branches, burls, rot, and cavities in the bark. Come winter (which is when the above photo was taken), these scars are very visible with no leaves to hide them.
Come spring though, it is very clear that they – somehow – are still alive and flourishing. They are extremely popular spots for urban wildlife. Elm trees produce a large amount of leaves compared to similarly sized trees and so are a favourite for birds to nest and hide from potential predators. Over the past few years there has been a lot of construction across the street as Guelph expands its Police Headquarters with a massive new building. Once I was walking under these elms and a loud CLANK from the construction caused a incredible amount of birds to fly out from these trees. Walking past them I originally assumed the trees were empty. Here’s to hoping the new Police Headquarters keep an eye out for these trees as well!
I’ve also seen a colony of ants working to make a cavity in one of the trees larger. I watched a hole about 4 feet up the trunk in the middle tree (aka Emily ) for about an hour as ants carried small pieces of wood out from inside the tree, dropping them onto the sidewalk below. It’s possible I was watching these ants kill the tree, but I doubt these ants would be the final straw. More likely they are just one more challenge the tree will grow around and adapt too.
The more I thought about and explored these three elms the more I began to wonder about just how old they are. Determining the age of trees – especially urban trees that can grow slower/quicker due to stresses – is not easy as just measuring the width of the trunk. Different trees grow at different speeds, in Ontario alone there are shrub-size, thin White Cedar/Thuja trees that are over 1000 years old and fast-growing Willow trees only a few decades old that would take at least three people with hands linked to wrap around the trunk.
To determine a tree’s age, experts often use Core Sampling (where they drill in and pull out a thin pole of wood and count the the tree rings), but I don’t have access to a Core Sampler. I’m also not even sure a core sample would be usable due to all the cavities in these trees. A lot of wood and rings would be missing and you would probably have to take a number of samples before you found a complete one.
So I gave up trying to solve that problem. It was just going to have to be a mystery. Then I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night a few weeks later. I knew what to do! To the Archive, ladies and gentlemen!
I figured I must be able to find old photos of the Guelph Armoury that include photos of the elms and I could use those to determine when they were planted. I started with some digital air photos from 1930 and 1950 kindly made available online by the great people at University of Waterloo. The three elms are very visible via Google’s satellite view in present day, I was hoping I would be able to see them in the historical air photos as well.
I had to zoom in a fair amount to make out the locations of the Elms in the photos so it was hard to be 100% sure. But I was confident I could clearly see the three elms in the 1950 photo, but not in the 1930 one. Meaning the elms were at least 70 years old. Take a look for yourself and slide-through the images below. Interestingly, it looks like there was maybe a forth elm in the 1950 photo! Perhaps not all of them managed to survive Dutch Elm Disease.
It looks like the Armoury’s backyard was expanded with that track you can see in the 1950 photo which is not in the 1930 photo. This seems to suggest that the elms were planted at the same time this backyard was expanded, which probably was to compensate for increased room needed to prep for World War II. So I went poking around for photos in the 1940s of the Armoury to see what I could find.
And Jackpot!
I found a photo dated 1946 in the Guelph Museums’ Collection Database with 3 young elms (and maybe a 4th?). You can tell it’s them by their distinctive short trunks and spreading branches.
I’d say judging from this photo these elms are probably at least 5 years old. So I would put the age of these elms at 80. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne are 80 years old.
Now, I’ll admit that a part of me was a bit disappointed. Only 80 years old? There’s other trees in Guelph that easily clear 100 (There’s a massive dead oak hidden in the forests just outside of Guelph that has probably been there at least 200 years). However with all that these elms have gone through, particularly surviving DED and living so close to downtown, 80 years is worth 200 in a forest easily. Hopefully they live for another 80. Looking at these trees, I’m not sure what can kill them that hasn’t tried already.
Help is on the way for the future of Elms in Guelph though! The University of Guelph’s Elm Recovery Project is collecting info on disease-tolerant, survivor elms and using their pollen/seeds to reintroduce Elms to Ontario that can survive the Dutch Elm Disease. Perhaps Charlotte, Emily, and Anne might have the key to bringing Elms back to Ontario and helping Winnipeg keep that urban jungle I love so much.
If you are in Guelph I encourage you to give Charlotte, Emily, and Anne a visit! I’m also thinking of doing a couple “Urban tree tours” in Guelph’s Royal City Park and Kitchener’s Victoria Park. If you are interested please let me know!
