Montreal takes cue from Charlie Brown
• Montreal has fallen short in its effort to claim the title for North America’s tallest Christmas tree, but it remains a strong contender for the continent’s ugliest tree.
Since it went up last week, the spindly, lopsided balsam fir — its tip apparently clipped off during transport — has become the butt of online jokes and disparaging remarks by passersby.
“It is not beautiful. There is not even a head at the top,” Louise Bernier said Monday as she walked along a slippery Ste. Catherine Street sidewalk.
“I don’t like it, not one bit. But I guess we’ll have to get used to looking at it.”
The tree’s stubby branches are decorated not with ornaments but with Canadian Tire logos, in honour of the company that sponsored the tree’s placement and paid for the lights. ( The value of the sponsorship was not disclosed.)
Tourism Montreal spent $ 2,500 in public funds on the project.
Anne Thomas and her friends were laughing at the tree as they walked by at lunchtime Monday. Although she appreciated that the tree is natural, she called the decorations “tacky” and said too much emphasis was placed on size.
“It’s maybe not the quantity but the quality that’s important,” Thomas said.
As part of Montreal’s 375th- anniversary celebrations beginning Jan. 1, a local Christmas-tree delivery company proposed to organizers that North America’s tallest Christmas tree be erected on the site of a downtown Christmas market. That honour has traditionally been held by New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
When Sapin MTL, the delivery company, learned last month that the tree headed for Rockefeller was taller than usual, a whopping 94 feet, it sent out an alert asking Quebecers to send in pictures of trees that might be bigger than the New York tree.
The tallest they could find was identified by a Christmas tree grower outside Sherbrooke, Que., but once it was chopped down it came up short: 88 feet, or nearly 27 metres.
Philippe Pelletier, a cofounder of Sapin MTL, said he has been surprised by the virulent reaction to the tree, which stands in the city’s Place des Festivals.
“We never expected that a Christmas tree could create that much controversy, that much reaction,” he said. “What we delivered is a natural Quebec tree, as a Quebec tree should be. People have in mind that a Christmas tree should be perfect, but that’s not the reality.”
Unlike the Rockefeller tree, which Pelletier said undergoes a little cosmetic surgery to make it symmetrical, the Montreal tree was not touched up.
“We’re asking everybody to look at the tree for more than five minutes and ask, why do they think it’s an ugly tree? Maybe after five minutes people will realize that this tree is just as unique as they are, as unique as Montreal is. … It’s an opportunity to celebrate diversity.”
Marc Brault, discussing the homely tree with friends, would rather be celebrating filled potholes.
“It would have been better if it had remained in the forest,” he said. “Instead of paying money for festivities, why don’t we invest in maintaining our city — the roads, for example?”