Trees fall for LRT trail project
Man tries to stop city crew cutting trees down by rail line in Waterloo Park
WATERLOO — Dozens of trees fell in Waterloo Park on Monday.
They were cut down by city staff. And that, according to Aaron Hornostaj, made a higher authority angry enough to toss a few thunderbolts across a darkened sky.
“They started chopping down trees and Mother Nature didn’t like that,” said Hornostaj, who watched the city crew call it a day as thunderstorms arrived by early afternoon.
“Mother Nature brought on the rain and pushed them out.”
As the storm rolled in, workers packed up for the day, leaving a long row of freshly severed stumps in their sawdust-sprinkled wake.
At least 30 stumps dotted the inside edges of one section of the Laurel/Trans Canada Trail beside the new LRT line through the park.
The trail is being widened later this summer as part of a $1.4-million project aimed at sprucing up the main promenade through the park.
On Monday, city staff prepared for that widening, trimming selected trees until Hornostaj, 33, confronted them.
The Waterloo native, with a mini-camera strapped to his chest, decided to defend an old cedar tagged for destruction.
“They were going to chop this one,” said Hornostaj, who travelled the world during a 15-year pro baseball career. “That’s when I said, ‘No, no, no.’ ”
“I literally stood in front of the guy with the chainsaw. I was like, ‘Dude, what are you doing here?’ ”
The city work crew packed up and left because it was the end of their day, said project manager Anna lee Sangster.
“It’s a widening of the path,” said Sangster, explaining why some trees were removed.
“They are either in the way of the future alignment. They may not be healthy. There’d be a number of reasons why they are being removed. But primarily, it is the trail alignment will be widened.”
Protocols were followed, she said. Notifications of the plans were posted and red marks placed on trees to be cut, mainly along the trail.
“We hadn’t heard a whole lot from people, generally,” she said.
Most of the work was completed Monday, she said. Just a few bits and pieces remain as the city crew worked from Seagram Drive to Erb Street and Caroline Street.
The city will be looking at replanting, once the project is completed.
“It’s really important to us we get that canopy back, especially for the people visiting in the summer,” said Sangster, a landscape technologist with the city.
“We’ve looked at the whole trail. And where we can save trees — where it’s worthwhile saving a tree — we are trying to do that.
“But at the same point, sometimes trees do need to be removed for improved community benefit.”
And, in this instance, Sangster says a widened trial that is safer and more comfortable for trail users, is the priority.
Hornostaj, watching over an old Y-shaped tree he figured was a Manitoulin maple, had a different priority. He didn’t see the sense in city workers taking down what appeared to be healthy trees.
“They were saying it’s a hazard because it’s split in two,” Hornostaj said of the double-trunked maple in jeopardy.
“And I’m like, ‘That’s the beauty of nature, right there. Have you not been to B.C. and seen these twirling trees?
“That’s what trees do.”