Felled trees carved into images
Artists are carving images into the felled trunks of a few massive old poplar trees that were taken down in Lafontaine Park.
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Kate
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Orr 13:41 on 2025-09-03 Permalink
In my ancestral part of Quebec there are many giant cottonwoods/poplars planted in the 1930s as make-work projects along highways and byways, and Transport Quebec likes to cut them down!
I have often wondered why not leave the first 20 ft or so standing use the giant stumps for artists to carve something interesting from them instead.
Happy to see I’m not the only person to have that idea, and that some of those people have the power to make it happen.
CE 16:33 on 2025-09-03 Permalink
They need to come down because they don’t naturally grow that large. Since in parks (in captivity?) they grow so large so quickly, the wood isn’t super strong and rots from the inside out. In Parc La Fontaine, they left the stumps and portions of the trees they cut down and they were very obviously rotten and dying. People were writing graffiti and putting up posters against cutting them down but what did they want the city to do?? Those trees were so big that if they had have fallen over, they likely would have taken a dozen more trees with them!
PatrickC 17:56 on 2025-09-03 Permalink
Many years ago, Armand Vaillancourt turned a tall tree stump on Durocher into a sculpture that became famous. My grandparents lived nearby on Prince Arthur and I have a vague memory of seeing the work being done. The tree now in a Quebec City museum (shades of Joni Mitchell…). I wonder how the artist dealt with the rot issue.
Ian 13:43 on 2025-09-04 Permalink
The city cut a bunch of 20 year old trees down on Queen west in Toronto, leaving 4-5 foot tall stumps until somebody carved 3 of them into pretty anatomically detailed dicks.
Kate 17:40 on 2025-09-04 Permalink
Incidentally, Armand Vaillancourt is still with us. He’s 96.
Orr, Quebec had some rows of Lombardy poplars, the tall narrow ones, often planted around religious sites like convents and so forth, much like you’ll see in France or the Netherlands beside roads. A lot of those have vanished over the years because, like any poplar, they’ll hollow out and become hazardous when they get old, and sometimes fall down. Also, they’re not a native species.
But regular poplars – native cottonwoods – does anyone really have to plant those? You have a piece of land, you’ll get cottonwoods and Manitoba maples, without having to plant them.