Cedarvale Park residents working to save community-planted trees

A Cedarvale Park resident is fighting back after the City of Toronto told her to remove over a dozen trees and cut down another dozen on her property.

Laura Michaels said she has lived in her home next to Cedarville Park since 2018. When a new home was constructed on the property, several mature trees and a fence were taken down as a part of the construction.

As a result, Michaels said the city ordered them to plant new trees which is what they did. She planted 30 trees along the side of the property in the same spot where the previous ones had stood three years ago.

“For the first two years, they needed to be hose-fed. So I sat with them every single day from April to October, and I would hose feed them for a slow 60 seconds,” said Michaels. “This is their first year being they can get their own water now so they don’t need to be bottle fed from the hose anymore. So they’re still very young trees.”

Now, the city says they are a “sight line obstruction” and she’s been ordered to remove 15 of the trees and cut down the other 15 by Friday.

“I panicked. I was really sad. And I felt terrified,” said Michaels when she got the letter.

She and other residents in the area have banded together to try and delay the tree’s removal and come up with other solutions.

“About 15 letters went directly through me to the city councillor and whereas others they sent them directly to the counselor, because we collectively feel we’re a community of tree people, of gardeners and landscapers and it just doesn’t really reflect what we like here,” Michaels said.

Michaels tells CityNews before the trees had grown, it was just grass in the area that also caused some safety concerns.

“At the time, cars would cut the corner quickly. Sometimes they would cut horizontally across the grass because if they were going quickly, they didn’t want to make the full corner so if anything, the trees have slowed down traffic.”

Luke Carvalho has lived next door to the property for 15 years and said there’s never been an issue with the laneway even when there were trees in that spot.

“I remember when she was putting in the trees and I was really happy about it. And almost every time I come by, she’s out taking care of the trees and tending to them and it’s really nice for the park, if I can speak for the community,” said Carvalho.

“I feel like Laura actually is doing the city’s work by keeping the nature and I’m disappointed in the city,” he added.

CityNews asked the city why these trees must be demolished despite Toronto’s commitment to green space. Their response was the cedar hedge has been identified as a potential safety concern.

“The City prioritizes tree protection and retention and aims to balance good arboricultural decisions with risk management for the safety of all community members,” read a statement from the City.

When asked if the City will plant trees to replace the ones that are destroyed, they said this site will be added to the City’s Tree Planting Program for inspection as “a possible planting site.”

Questions regarding a possible workaround from cutting the trees down were not answered.

“I just don’t think there’s a problem here. I think that the city’s first resort was take down the trees but there’s so many other things they could do,” added another neighbour Michel Neray, who has lived in the area for five decades.

“It seems like the wrong-minded idea to reduce private property owner’s ability to make their property green and contribute to neighborhood beautification,” Neray said.

He added in the whole time he’s lived in the neighbourhood, nobody has ever been injured by a car in this location because of visibility.

“The sight line used to be much higher than it is now,” Neray said. “This laneway is used by the only the 20 or so houses that are here … so traffic concerns seem to be a false pretense.”

“I would like to get it stopped. And we, as a community, are more than willing to institute other solutions that address the bylaw officers concern and there’s a precedent for rounded mirrors being installed in unnamed laneways across the city,” explained Michaels. “I’d be happy or we would be happy to pay for one ourselves if that’s beyond the city scope.”

“If they were cut down, I think I would grieve. And I think a lot of us would.”