It’s just one tree that lived long ago, but its story still resonates, and has the capacity to make us remember how things used to be and how they might yet be in the future.
In 1958, forest workers in Copper Canyon, MacMillan Bloedel’s Chemainus sawmill division on Vancouver Island, cut down a massive old-growth Douglas fir to be shipped to England as a flag pole in celebration of the centennial of British Columbia and the bicentennial of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens.
Everything about this tree is startling, including how forest workers managed to cut it down and transport it on logging roads to be shipped overseas. The Guinness Book of Records recognized the wooden flag pole as the largest in the world at 225 feet. Even Life Magazine wrote about it. And there is a mural in Chemainus dedicated to the event.
Today, the big trees are almost all gone from our area, but it needn’t be that way forever. As North Cowichan embarks on a public consultation on management of the Six Mountains/Municipal Forest Reserve, know that the big trees can still come back — not to be harvested again, but for everyone to admire — if we only have the foresight to let them.
Read the full story on this amazing tree:
http://www.designroots.ca/2018/05/17/__trashed-2/