Happy Fucking Canada Day

““Assume” makes an ass out of “u” and “me”” — My Dad.

There is a giant maple tree in my front yard in Toronto. Google, some string, a tape measure, pi and the calculator on my phone say it’s been there since about 1870, just like Canada. In ten years living under it, I have imagined some personhood for it — as you do. This gargantuan old cuss of a tree watched the whole tire fire of the 20th century from my yard. I imagined them to be wise, and very tired. Most of all, I imagined them as belonging here in a way that me, the house and the street do not.

It is, after all, quite performatively Canadian. Every autumn, after months of reproductive dandruff — flowers and seed pods and such — the tree showers down national symbols. Tens of thousands of Canadian flags to be swept into bags and taken away.

The Norway Maple was introduced to North America from its native Europe in the mid 1700s as an urban shade tree because it is resistant to more diseases and bugs than maples indigenous to North America.

I had precedent for personifying trees. Growing up on Lake Superior, we had a small birch tree in our front yard. It was only a bit older than me. We moved in when it was a sapling and I was a baby. Me and that birch hit puberty together. I grew to six feet tall the year its papery bark turned white. For a little while we were the same height.

Every other spring growing up, my Dad would order a big stack of birch trunks to be dropped next to my friend the birch. Dad would chainsaw the trunks into logs which my brothers and I would split into smaller pieces with axes. Then we piled them up to dry so we could burn them over winter. I assumed the birch understood that, as explained by my Dad, this was cheaper than using the furnace and was therefore good.

My hometown was a section of cleared Boreal forest used to store labourers and their families. The labourers were engaged in various kinds of resource extraction. First railroads, then a paper mill, then mines. “Town” was surrounded by “Bush”, which was Boreal forest. “Town” was former Bush with the trees scraped off. If we wanted more Town — like the house I grew up in — we scraped off more trees. Sometimes a few trees would be spared for decoration, like the birch in my yard. Ornamental survivors.

Norway Maple root systems grow above those of other trees, so they monopolize access to water. They grow leaves first and drop them last, so they take all the light.

Our street was right on the border of Town and Bush. While I wasn’t sure about me or the house or the street, I could tell the birch belonged there. Birches stretched on forever behind the houses across the street. Not just birches though. The Bush had biodiversity. Poplar, spruce, cedar, tamarack, pine, and so on. Town was a monoculture, aside from the Anishinaabeg who came into Town for school and groceries and lumber because the reserves didn’t have those things. I assumed that Town was mostly white by accident.

The Norway Maple is an invasive species. Unless actively resisted they eventually starve all other trees and plants of water and sun to their benefit until there are only Norway Maples.

Because of the precedent set by my friend the birch, I assumed that the maple in my Toronto yard was another ornamental survivor. A bit of Bush left in Town for decoration. Again, I wasn’t sure about me or the house or the street, but I assumed the maple belonged here at least. My Dad was right about assumptions.

If unopposed, Norway Maples scrape off the forest and replace it with a monoculture.

The story of Canada was told to us in code. Most of the codewords meant murder. We cannot know where we stand until we sweep away the maple leaves and check what’s underneath. Canada must check our assumptions — about us, about this place, about the people we took it from — against reality. Not looking under the maple leaves will continue to make an ass out of “u” and “me”.

My hometown was not mostly white by accident. Mostly white places are always on purpose. As for my front yard friend, the maple is not like the birch I grew up with. It’s like me, or the house or the street. It’s a settler too. A Norway Maple.

A very Canadian tree.

Anyway,

Happy fucking Canada Day.