Just What Colour Is Your Green Plan Mayor Miller

This is a question that people in the Wood Green area are asking about Miller gives developers the okay to go ahead and cut down 2000 trees and destroy an oasis when an alternative site is available. Miller's Green Plan is like his new broom, one cent campaign, etc. Just a con job.........

Chainsaw Miller
Imagine an oasis in the middle of suburbia, filled with many varieties of trees and birds. Now imagine the city having it cut down
By MIKE STROBEL

Skunks. Rabbits. Foxes. Mice. Warblers. Nuthatches. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

Where are we Toto, City Hall?

Can't be. Too quiet. Too friendly. Too natural. Too sane.

No, it's Wood Green Ravine, a leafy refuge near Lawrence Ave. E. and Manse Rd. deep in Scarborough.

David "I Cannot Tell a Lie" Miller is about to chop it down.

Well, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay ...

First, let's take a walk in the five-acre wood, with some of the 1,200 locals who have signed letters in its defence.

WHITE-TAILED DEER

Trees never look their best in March, but spring is afoot. You expect Winnie The Pooh to waddle around a corner.

No bears, but in the last cold snap three white-tailed deer ran past Gerry McGhee and his German shepherd, Woody.

Monarch butterflies paint Wood Green orange during migrations. Bats darken summer skies in pursuit of bugs.

There are 2,000 trees, from saplings to big ol' apple trees, Manitoba maples, locusts, birch and poplar.

In August, blackberries turn local kids purple and everyone gets sick of pie.

Trillium beds bloom. Black-eyed Susans, asters, ferns.

Four kinds of woodpecker (Downey, hairy, pileated and red-headed), four kinds of sparrow (house, Lincoln's, song, vesper), two kinds of finch (house, American gold) and your usual raccoons, squirrels and moles. Mallards nest.

STUNNED LOCALS

You get the picture. An oasis. Smack in the hurly-burly of suburbia.

Midnight at the oasis ...

On Friday, City Hall stunned locals by granting developers permission to fire up the chainsaws. Any day now.

Here, in a red-breasted nutshell, is how Wood Green Ravine came to this brink:

City Hall owned the five acres and transferred it to Habitat for Humanity and a Catholic charity called Women's Religious Projects to build "affordable housing."

Why Mayor Miller et al offered Wood Green Ravine is beyond me.

Another site, treeless, near Scarborough Town Centre is also available.

Wood Green's defenders, aka the Manse Valley Community Association (MVCA), figured reason would rule.

Especially in light of the mayor's green plan, which calls for many more trees.

I don't know how much greenhouse gas the Wood Green trees filter, but they are a spear toss from a filtration plant and a lovely street called Chemical Court.

Spear? Don and Sharon York's daughter found a stone spearhead in the ravine's Danzig Creek. The ROM dated it to 10,000 years.

Don, 69, the MVCA chairman, tells me this as he leads the tour of Wood Green.

"Listen," says paramedic Andy Kemp, 45, and we all pause. And touched the sound of silence ...

Even Woody the dog was named for these trees, says Gerry McGhee's daughter Carly, 18, an art college student.

"It's horrible what they're going to do."

Families picnic here, on grassy swaths mowed by residents. Kids build tree forts. Teachers bring science classes.

This is common ground between classic Scarborough bungalows on the east and townhouses on the west.

"Scrubland," said Mayor Miller on a visit before the 60 new housing units were approved.

"Eh?" wondered local Bruce Smith, 69.

"Not that there's anything wrong with scrub," replied the mayor. Bruce says he was hellbent on housing.

Scrub? Two dozen of the trees are ancient enough to be "protected" by the city. Which did them absolutely no good.

"Wood Green keeps this community friendly and together," says Bruce's wife, Betty.

"It's where we walk. It's where we meet."

Says Don York: "People moved here because of the woods, the nature. All of a sudden, it's gonna disappear.

"We aren't saying the housing should be stopped, (but) this is an environmentally sensitive area and it should not be destroyed.

"They've made a serious error and they need to correct it now."

Councillor Ron Moeser tells me the Town Centre lot is still on offer, and he'll raise the matter again at council.

Sure. Those guys can't see the forest, let alone the trees.

I'm afraid one morning soon, maybe when the trilliums shine and the green plan publicity wanes, the folks of Wood Green will awake to the buzz of chainsaws.

Just what colour is your green plan, Mr. Mayor?