I’m hoping you can help us with this campaign. If you have admired the gorgeous cherry trees on Menzies St. near Niagara, I am sorry to tell you that a developer is going to cut them all down – in order to move the sidewalk over a few feet. And the city has given them approval.
Here is my email to the Mayor and Council, please email your letter to: mayorandcouncil@victoria.ca
Dear members of the Victoria City Council,
I beg you, please do not cut down the cherry trees on Menzies St. near Niagara, in James Bay.
I have lived in James Bay for 18 years. Every spring, I look forward to the sweet beauty and fragrance of these gorgeous cherry trees. They are some of the first to blossom in Victoria – for over six weeks – and herald the beginning of the inspiring spring season in our beautiful city. Their blossoms come at a time when people are worn out from winter and need some encouragement.
These magnificent cherry trees have lived with us in James Bay since the 1930s, when I believe they were a gift from Japan. Please reconsider your plan and find an alternative to chopping them down. There is plenty of room to expand the sidewalk several feet without having to cut down these precious trees, which have given so much beauty and inspiration to James Bay. To lose them would be an impoverishment of life in our community.
Thank you for your kindhearted consideration.
Do not chop down the Cherry Trees! You must find another way!
It was a gift to the city , it’s a major tourist attraction! And keeps the City of Victoria Beautiful!
YOUR CHANCE TO SPEAK UP FOR THESE BEAUTIFUL HERITAGE TREES!
PUBLIC HEARING – Thursday, March 24, 2020 to 6:30 PM
Victoria city council
To show your support please consider speaking at the Virtual Public Hearings. Info: https://www.victoria.ca/EN/meta/news/public-notices/virtual-public-hearings.html
Please address – Agenda Item F.4.
110 Menzies St., 111 Croft St. and 450–458 Niagara St. rezoning application #00742
Without support from people who care, little by little we loose the very things that make Victoria and its communities the remarkable places they are.
With a little imagination and some real committment development can work with the special landscape features that make our communities so unique in character and beauty. Protecting our heritage trees is central to this.
Mayor Helps and Council
Born and raised in Saanich, I have recently moved to James Bay.
My work as a parks and environmental activist over 3 decades has been focussed on the wild forestlands that surround our region and in particular the creation of a Sea to Sea Greenbelt that now protects wild forests stretching from Saltspring Island to Sooke …. our city’s beautiful forever green backdrop, urban containment boundary, recreational solace and most importantly the home and wildlife refuge for our regions native plants and animals.
I don’t usually address urban forest issues but today I speak on behalf of the heritage flowering plum trees along Menzies at Niagara ….. the site of the proposed 131 Unit Village Gardens development.
First, I commend this council for its vision in boldly stepping up to create the network of bike lanes that now invite families and commuters into and around our city on bicycles. This was a game changer for Victoria and for me personally.
However, some games shouldn’t be changed. Our mature heritage trees are our old friends. They are much more than infrastructure. They are abiding parts of our lives, like old friends we look forward to seeing as we walk through the neighbourhood…. we know them. They brighten our days with the return of their bright foliage and blossoms in springtime, large canopies that offer welcome shade on summer afternoons and in winter their beautiful visible limbs cradling bird nests ….they bring a simple happiness to a walk to the beach or to the grocery store.
Simple happiness is drained out of our lives with the march of so called progress where simple natural beauty is replaced and overshadowed by slick, cold, concrete and plantings that never quite stop looking like the 3D models and renderings that promoted them.
We need to make more of an effort. We have something really special here. People talk about it all over the world. If we want to retain the qualities that give Victoria it’s unique, warm, inspiring community feel then we need to do things differently than every other city where trees and nature always take a back seat to the efficiencies, convenience and economics of profit driven development. Especially in communities like James Bay where history is still so well preserved in it’s heritage homes, trees and neighbourhood feel. These are irreplaceable and we should work around them …. hold on to them and preserve the feel of them. They are priceless. We could do this.
I absolutely support the move toward bringing native trees and plants back into the urban landscape as plantings. There is no science however to backup that flowering plums and our other non native heritage trees cannot coexist. Where heritage plums like those on Menzies are reaching the last decades of their normal lifespan a new tree of the same species if possible should be planted close by and the two grow alongside until the old tree is no longer viable.
In closing….there is a kind of chronic sadness in the world these day… I believe it’s connected both consciously and unconsciously to the loss and destruction of nature happening all around us…. and all over our planet. COVID just slowed us down enough that we could feel it. You don’t even have to be a flake or some kind of hysteric to say that out loud now. Its the science of our day, its the drug problem of our kids, its the hard to put your finger on thing that leaves you feeling vaguely depressed.
There are small things that strangely make a BIG difference in our lives…. in our communities. Save these trees. It will help.
Thank you
You have to be kidding, you cannot chop these trees down, don’t be like the people in charge who lost us the beautiful Crystal Gardens. I and my five children, now all grown up as are their children, I moved to Victoria as a single parent in 1968with 5 little children, this house I live in, brand new. I worked once they were all in school for the B/C Government, Ministry of finance, working first in the Parliament buildings then in the Douglas building, the flowering cherries on Menzies were just so beautiful, I am 91 now, but I still remember them every year, there has to be a different way, lots of streets not planted, plant our native varieties of trees on them, , like dogwood, we have native dogwood all the way through this subdivision in Colwood, encourage people to plant them in their gardens,