A Deeper Future
Conrad (Left), Mark (Middle) and Claudia (Right)
When our brood gathered to celebrate Mother’s Day last month, I was reminded that having children raises your horizon. Suddenly the future seems deeper.
Having grandchildren does much the same, only deeper still.
Mary, my wife and I have 6 grandchildren; every one has the potential to live long enough to see the 22nd century. Imagine. Our most recent addition, Matilda will be 77 on January 1, 2100.
A tree planted today will also be 77 on Jan 1, 2100. Depending on the species, it could be 4 stories tall and its trunk a few meters or more in girth. Now imagine forests of them in communities across the country.
We have come a long way since our inception, almost three years ago.
Since 2021, we’ve assisted in planting over a million trees. Raised $6.5 million including the Grand Trees Climate solution campaign and the support of Natural Resources Canada, and of course private sector donations.
These numbers excite us and inspire our next ambitious goal: To support planting another 1 million trees by 2028 and to make it possible, to raise $6 million within the next three years. Recent transformational pledges of $1 million from an anonymous donor and a $500K renewed commitment from our friends at the Barrett Family Foundation have brought this goal much closer to reality. Our proposition to you, our many supporters, is to leverage our network of funders and multiply every dollar you donate 3 to 4 times. You can help us do this!
Through collaboration with Trees for Life, our planting partners can often double their tree planting capacity and maintenance of newly planted trees. As we are no longer tree planters but urban forest builders and nurturers. It is in everyone’s best interest to ensure that our trees survive and thrive.
To our tree planting partners: municipalities, community service groups, schools, and of course hospitals and other health care facilities, our proposition to you is simple: you bring $2 in value to a tree planting project and TFL provides at a minimum, 50% more.
You might ask why planting trees in Canada’s urban environment is so important. Why all of the attention? And the answer is simple and complex.
It is as simple as the air that we breathe.
I have read a lot about fears that Artificial Intelligence may take on a life of its own. That computers someday in the future, may be able to think as we do.
I note that we have no such fears where trees are concerned.
There is a reason for this: the ability of a tree to create oxygen, cool the environment and sequester carbon is more sophisticated than anything created by the hand of humankind.
Why is our work important? Because we cannot replace trees as the greatest living stewards of our urban environment. We simply cannot.
We may not have answers for many of our modern ills. Affordable housing, food insecurity, and war in the Sudan and Ukraine, to name just a few.
But we can change the world and make it a better place one tree at a time.
And we learn from them.
When we observe the activity that lives in a tree: nesting birds, the interdependence of more than 400 insect species in an oak tree, for example, we have to look up.
We look up to our volunteers, staff, partners, and friends in Ottawa and Queen’s Park. We look up to our founding supporters and we look up to the vision of planting living tributes to our healthcare workers, front-line workers, and first responders and heroes however you define them, at a time when our gratitude may risk fading into the past like yesterday’s newspaper headline.
A tree that says thanks will grow and mature over time, as families do.
Trees and kids: together forcing us to look past the immediate concerns of the day and to look up.
Thank you for celebrating these accomplishments so far and for looking ahead to possibilities of more, and most of all, thank you for being supportive of Trees For Life.
Mark Cullen
Volunteer President, Canadian Trees For Life
www.treesforlife.ca