Save the great red oak

Zhelevo the great red oak towers over the house that was built next to it.

Story by Shauna Dobbie, photos by David Johnson

Perhaps it was a marker for the fur traders along the Carrying Place route that ended in what is now Toronto, along the shore of Lake Ontario. This great oak, over 300 years old, has seen the birth of a city and managed to escape the axe. From the street today, it seems as though it might swallow the bungalow beneath it whole as its enormous limbs grow over the roof from behind, dipping down below the eaves in front.

This is Zhelevo. The old man-tree got his name from Edith George, his most die-hard supporter. Edith lives in the same area as the oak, and she took my husband and me around her neighbourhood, telling us about its history.

A previous owner of the house and land where the Zhelevo is, airman Michael William Nicholas, loved the oak. He took good care of it, pruning and fertilizing it and digging trenches to get water to the roots. Michael bought the house in 1961 and has long since passed.

Today, you can see that the house and tree don’t go well together. It’s too close to the house and its roots are invading the structure. This much is clear: one of them has to go. And Edith is determined that it should be the house.

The current owner of the house signed a sale agreement with the City of Toronto in December of 2019. If $430,000 can be raised by December 12 of 2020, the city will take ownership of the property, the house will be removed and a park built around Zhelevo.

The COVID-19 crisis has got in the way of the fundraising effort, though, and the deadline is looming. Onethird of the money has been procured as I write this. Will the other twothirds come in on time? Will the city extend the deadline? We cannot know, and the safest thing to do is to donate today, and to talk to people you know about donating.

But, you may ask, why donate if you don’t live anywhere near the tree? If you have no hope of seeing it ever?

The tree and the house are a little too close for comfort.

You’d donate for the same reason you give for relief after a devastating tsunami across the globe. With the tsunami, you recognize that people you will never meet deserve to feel the kindness of the human heart in their hour of need. This is Zhelevo’s hour of need, and whether you believe a tree wants to live or not, you can understand how the desire to save it from becoming coffee tables is part of the human condition.

Edith says, “This tree is my cathedral.” She goes to it to pray when disaster strikes. “The great red oak is a survivor and it gives me hope for a planet full of natural and manmade disasters. Like our country Canada, this tree has survived so much and is still standing.” C