Transcript Transcript

Who's protecting your favourite tree? Possibly nobody, says author and journalist J.B. MacKinnon.
Vancouverites have a special relationship with trees, and for good reason. The city is lush with old, beloved trees. They line our streets, root in our parks and crowd the mountains to the north. And while climate change and densification strain the urban forest, there isn't a concerted effort to protect our leafy neighbours.
"My favourite tree is in the Broadway corridor," MacKinnon said. "I'm in the Broadway corridor too, clinging to life there, like so many tenants. And the tree tenants are at least as endangered as we are."
MacKinnon has reported for The Tyee for two decades and in these pages co-authored a series called The 100-Mile Diet.
This week, he explains how beloved trees end up on the chopping block — and what you can do about it.
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Harrison Mooney: I want you to take a moment and picture your favourite tree.
Imagine yourself standing there underneath its branches. What do you see? What do you hear? Smell? Are there birds in the tree? Ants at your feet? How long has the tree been there, and how long does it have left?
This is the Tyee Podcast. I'm your host, Harrison Mooney. Every episode, we dive deeper into the stories shaping the West Coast, because Canada needs more BC. This week: a Tyee stalwart.
J.B. MacKinnon is an author and journalist based in Vancouver. He's been contributing to the Tyee for more than two decades. And within our web pages, McKinnon co-authored a series called The 100 Mile Diet, an experiment in eating from local food systems. Maybe you've heard of it. Today, he joins us for a tour of Vancouver's oldest trees. We'll explore why we need them, why we love them, and why we keep cutting them down. Stay with us.
Harrison Mooney: Do you feel pressure to eat local now that you're the 100 Mile Diet guy, or can you still get Froot Loops from Safeway?
J.B. MacKinnon: These days, it was so long ago that that book came out that it's not as big a deal. But at the time the book came out, and especially when they did the TV show out in Mission, we would get caught out if we went to a sushi restaurant, and we'd inevitably have people going, like, "gotcha!"
Harrison Mooney: Yeah, I'd be stressed about that. Just being discovered eating something somewhere else.
J.B. MacKinnon: It gives me an appreciation for how David Suzuki must feel about everything. He can't drive, he should basically be walking around with no clothes on.
Harrison Mooney: If he ever steps on like a bug, someone's gonna be like, "How dare you, David Suzuki."
J.B. MacKinnon: I heard people talking about he flies in a float plane, and he, you know, drives, and blah blah blah, and it's just, you know, yeah, he could never win.
Harrison Mooney: You still need to get around. We're actually here today to talk about trees. J.B., are you familiar with the infamous seawall tree poisonings of 2004?
J.B. MacKinnon: I'm not.
Harrison Mooney: Okay, can I tell? Can I tell you a story?
J.B. MacKinnon: Yea, fill me in.
Harrison Mooney: Okay. So, it was this very wealthy local interior designer who lived in the West End, and she actually just passe. I'm not even going to tell you how I know that. And there were these big trees that were impeding the view from her condo, and she couldn't cut them down. So, she and a friend went to Washington, and they got this special herbicide, and then they like drilled holes in the trees, and then like injected them with the herbicide. And somehow her friend turned on her and told the police that they had done this. So she got like a court summons, and she goes to court to like pay her fine or answer for her crimes, ...