When Michelle Gerwing first noticed that the tall, lone spruce tree had survived the demolition of the former Olds High School building, she was curious about why this seemingly unremarkable tree was left standing.
When Michelle Gerwing first noticed that the tall, lone spruce tree had survived the demolition of the former Olds High School building, she was curious about why this seemingly unremarkable tree was left standing.
Having graduated from the school in 2005, Gerwing was aware of its hermit-like existence in a courtyard within the school.
"But when I was a student, nobody knew of the importance of the tree or the history of the tree," she said, adding few students ever ventured into the courtyard.
After the school was torn down at its former site between 50 and 52 avenues south of Highway 27 in 2010 and a new high school was built on the east side of town, Gerwing, who now works as an anchor for CTV in Regina, slowly learned the history of the tree.
Now, she said she is glad it survived and serves as a legacy for the school.
"There are so many memories of that school. That school, the majority of it was built in the ’60s and there was a part of the school that was even older than that," Gerwing said. "There’s families that have decades and generations of people who went to that school."
While the tree survived the demolition of the old school building, its future is now in question.
Chinook’s Edge School Division owns the land it stands upon and the property is now for sale.
The Town of Olds is preparing to extend 51 Avenue through the property and Cam Clark Ford is looking to build a new dealership on the east side of the property.
Although these projects don’t directly threaten the tree, which stands on the west side of the property, the potential sale of the land is concerning to those who want to see the tree remain standing.
Pierre Lambert, a retired OHS French teacher who now lives in Victoria, B.C., planted the tree in 1995.
Dave Herbert, an instructor at the Olds College School of Horticulture who died in 2007, donated the spruce to the school.
Lambert said the tree means a great deal to many town residents, especially former staff and students from the school and people who knew Herbert, and it would be a sign of "respect" if it could be saved.
"It would be wise for whoever makes something (on that property) to keep it because it will look better," he said.
As for the idea of moving it to the site of the new high school, which current school principal Tom Christensen said was explored after the school was torn down, Lambert recognizes that transplanting the tree could be dangerous.
"Is the root system good enough to move it?" he said.
Gerard Fournier, founder and president of Didsbury’s For Trees Company, which specializes in tree services such as pruning and stump removals, is confident, however, the tree can be transplanted.
"It should move just fine," he said. "It’s not too large that it can’t be moved by a piece of equipment. It is expensive but the risk is comparatively low as long as it’s removed in the correct season."
The window for moving the tree, he added, is from the end of August to whenever the ground freezes and all that’s needed for the job is a large, truck-mounted tree spade that could be brought in from Lethbridge.
Fournier said the job would cost between $1,800 and $2,000 and Olds residents have approached him about moving the tree.
But Laurie Newsham, an arboriculture instructor at Olds College’s School of Environment, isn’t so sure a move is a good idea.
He said he was consulted about transplanting the tree when the school was demolished and at that time he told the high school and the college it would be a "challenging move for a tree of that size" and the transplant would involve "significant amounts of money."
Because the above ground portion of the tree is so large, Newsham added, its root system will be massive and bringing that system out of the ground will be costly.
The "rule of thumb," he said, is for every inch of trunk diameter, you need a "root ball" of 10 inches in diameter.
So if the spruce trunk is roughly 10 inches in diameter, a minimum of 80 inches of root ball would need to be brought up, requiring the "upper range" of available tree spades in the province, Newsham said.
Movers would also need to consider moving overhead wires on the roadways between the sites of the former and new schools and controlling traffic along the way, he said, all adding to the cost of the transplant.
"But can you guarantee the health of that tree after you move it? That’s the tough one."
Newsham said even if the move is successful, it could take up to 10 years for the tree to recover from the shock.
A "more viable" option, he added, is collecting seed off the tree and planting "dozens or even hundreds of trees to commemorate that tree."
Christensen said the idea of planting seedlings was explored but even that is a "monumental" project.
"You have to nurture them for awhile before they go in the ground."
If a transplant isn’t feasible, the school division and the town would step up to try to protect the tree where it currently stands.
Norm McInnis, chief administrative officer for the Town of Olds, said while the town doesn’t have any "tools" to directly protect the tree, it would attempt to sway whoever buys the property to keep the tree.
"We certainly will speak with whoever brings in a development application," he said. "The best that we could do is see if the design for whatever is going to go on that property can work around it."
And Allan Tarnoczi, Chinook’s Edge School Division’s assistant superintendent of corporate services, said the school division has already successfully lobbied to save the tree and would do so again.
"That tree is still standing because it has a place in the hearts of the students and staff of Chinook’s Edge, in particular those students and staff in the town of Olds, and we did everything that we could, working with the demolition company, to make sure that after that building was removed, that tree was still standing," he said. "And we’ll pass on those sentiments concerning that tree to whoever buys the property in the hopes that they too see the value in keeping that tree."
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