Sacrificing Our Elders To The Machines On The Alter Of "Sustainable Development" : The Government Targets Some Of Southwestern Ontario's last old growth Oak trees for building a powerline
Raising awareness about a proposed high voltage powerline that would require clearcutting some of the last old growth trees we have left in the region for electric car factories and data centers
me (left) Adam Rhoads (right) standing next to two different old growth oak trees on his family’s property that are in one of the proposed paths of the high voltage powerline
Today, within Statist regimes such as Canada (and Ontario), elder trees are, at best, treated as “renewable resources” or, most of the time, as “obstacles” standing in the way of “progress” and “sustainable development”. There are no institutionalized teachings on the sacredness of trees, on the contrary, Canadian government and industry standards follow a fundamentally colonial model, in which forest lands are treated as terra nullius. The assumption is that nature is capital, a resource to be managed and extracted from for the oligarchy’s perpetual economic benefit. This idea is implicit in Canada’s policy and history, most notably in the policy of “sustained yield”. Sustained yield is based on the concept that old-growth forests are an asset to be converted into tree farm plantations, managed by ‘science’, to yield timber resources in perpetuity. That includes forests on private property if you get in the way of the government’s corporate partners, they`ll take your land using expropriation and “land easement” laws and send in the armed goons to remove you if you resist.
This is what the corporate bosses within Hydro One intend to do here in SW Ontario in the years ahead, weaponizing “sustainable development” rhetoric and using the judicial system and agents of the state as mercenary enforcers for their racketeering operations (building powerlines with routes that prioritize profitability and throw forests and home owners under the bus, declaring their homes and the forests as “acceptable losses” in their endeavors to feed energy to their corporate partners for electric car factories, chemical soaked fracking gas heated energy thirsty hydroponic greenhouses and data centers.
Like any large corporation, while there may be many that are driven by greed, I know that there are some good people that work for Hydro One too, people with ecological awareness and a conscience. So this is a call to you, the ethical workers within that corporation, to let your conscience guide you to put pressure on your bosses and, if need be, refuse to follow orders to build a powerline that requires stealing people’s homes and decimating some of the last few old growth trees we have left in this county.
“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for what is right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience.
Law never made men more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
If it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.“
The Canadian government perpetuates a forest management regime that involves stripping forests bare, killing their many inhabitants (Ecocide), then either leaving the land denuded of trees (as most of this region is now) or sometimes replacing them with monocrop tree farms devoid of “competing” vegetation and unable to support the wildlife populations that once called those diverse habitats home. This ecologically illiterate worldview resulted in the landscape you can observe in southwestern Ontario today which is mostly deforested and devoid of old growth.
That being said, I want to make it clear that Human beings are not innately ecologically degenerative. We are capable of choosing a different path if we choose integrity and courage over cowardice and greed.
We live in a time when governments and corporations are arriving at our front doors with a smile on their face telling us we need to allow them to seize our land in the name of “the public good” so they can clearcut the old growth trees and build industrial scale powerlines to perpetuate and scale up their racketeering operations. They tell us it is “sustainable development” they inform us that they do not care that 200 year old plus oaks will have to be cut down for their powerline to go on their intended route.
They talk about clearcutting some of the last bits of Carolinian Forest and old growth trees we have left in this county (after over a century of industrial development has decimated 99%+ of the old growth forests here) with euphemisms like “vegetation management” and they try to tell us this appalling ecologically degenerative behavior is “necessary”.
I refuse to buy nor tolerate their lies and nefarious behavior any longer.
Please read, sign and share the petition linked below to lend your voice to speak up for the trees.
This old growth Chinquapin Oak is over 12 feet in circumference at 5 feet off the ground.
He has been growing in this area since long before there was an entity called “Canada” and long before humans harnessed electricity in powerlines.
The place he calls home falls within one of the government’s/ hydro corporation’s proposed routes for a high voltage powerline for electric car manufacturing and data centers in southern Ontario.
The government and their corporate partners may attempt to weaponize the legal system and our tax dollars to steal the land these trees are growing on from the family that has been stewarding them since 1840 and chop them down for “sustainable development”.
Adam Rhoads standing next to one of the old growth White Oaks in the intended path of one of the proposed government approved Hydro One high voltage powerline routes that would clearcut a large section of the Carolinian forest his family has stewarded for over a hundred years if it is allowed to go forward.
I went for a walk in the forest his family has stewarded for over a hundred years and spoke to Adam Rhoads (shown in the picture above) to get his thoughts on this proposed powerline.
The following is part of our discussion:
Me (Gavin Mounsey) :
So the Ontario Hydro Company and Government wants to clear cut through one of the few forests that’s remaining here in Essex County, and they want to cut right through a piece of property that has several really large old growth oak trees and a lot of biodiversity that’s been stewarded here by your family for a very long time. And I was hoping to ask, why do you think it’s important to protect that and to not take that path for development?
Adam
“Well, to me, the original old growth forest has been diminished so greatly in Essex County and Southwestern Ontario, that there isn’t enough biodiversity of large tree species left to sustain the population. We’ve managed to steward these trees for hundreds of years, and now, the government and Hydro One is coming through and saying, well, that’s the only option.
Well, we don’t see it that way. “
looking up the trunk of an Old Growth Shagbark Hickory growing on the Rhoads family’s property
Me
From that I’ve seen, the large power demand increase that they want for these new, high voltage power lines is not so much for residential. That’s a small portion of it, but mainly more for industrial petrochemical dependent hydroponic greenhouses, electric cars, battery manufacturing, car manufacturing, and AI data centres down the road. So I pretty much think that that’s all about making money for a select few that already have a lot of money, and not really about respecting the little forest we have left.
Did you have anything to say about the electric cars that are said to be, you know, required for jobs, and how it’s sustainable, so we need to do this development?
Adam:
“See, in Canada, electric vehicles will never be fully sustainable, because we have winter, we have hot temperatures, we have the extremes. So electric vehicles work in a laboratory when you’re part, you know, you go from your heated, controlled parking garage, and you drive five minutes down the road, and you go parking your parking garage for your office job. That’s great for an electric vehicle. But when you’re looking at having to drive a half an hour drive into work, and sometimes that weather is adverse, it can be in Canada, you know, snowstorms and things like that, it’s a complete farce to say that, we’re gonna use electric vehicles for everything by any date.
It’s really just a push for another money grab, to me. It doesn’t seem like we are pushing for efficiency. We are pushing for what however we can squeeze more money out of people. Like, you know, the full switchover from electric, from gas to electric means that everybody has to put charging stations in their house, and everybody has to upgrade their grid, and all of these companies that produce all of these products are going to profit greatly from a system that doesn’t need to be put in place.”
This old growth oak may be targeted by our corrupt government and their corporate partners to be chopped down, chipped and bulldozed over so that a powerline for electric cars and data centers can be built. I see elder trees like this as sacred and revere them as teachers and I intend on doing what I can to protect this being and his kin against the humans that have lost their way. Please help us to defend these trees by sharing this and with the support of a donation via this link : https://fundrazr.com/52kMMc Every little bit counts.
Me:
Yeah, I agree. Well said. And, uh, that’s not to mention the impact on the mining communities, because, a lot of people up north are gonna be facing groundwater contamination from the lithium mines.
“Yeah, at what point do we say, like, is it just a money grab? Is it just a “green” scam?
Like you said, People weaponize the term ‘sustainable development’ ..”
Moving on to look at the second proposed route for this unwanted and unnecessary powerline we will take a look at a forested property in South Woodslee.
Laura Cassidy has called her South Middle Road property in Woodslee home for nearly 50 years. The 38-acre lot of largely untouched woodland and wetland falls directly within Hydro One’s second proposed route.
“We bought this property to preserve it,” Cassidy says. “We wanted to make this a sanctuary for animals.”
Hydro One and their government enablers put the Map below out on their website with two proposed routes. Both of these routes cut through some of the last Carolinian Forest we have left in the County at the locations circled in red below.
This tactic of providing the illusion of choice between two options that are both morally reprehensible, ecologically degenerative and overtly imperialistic for the benefit of corporate profiteering is very much aligned with the statist rituals of voting for one of two politicians (which are both corrupt, beholden to corporations, both making promises they will not keep and both intending on pillaging the biodiversity of the land in the name of short term profits, at the cost of stealing the heritage of future generations). The dangling of two options and telling people that is all they have to choose from (telling you to choose “the lesser of two evils”) is a psychological warfare technique designed to manufacture consent, complacency, passivity, subservience, compliance and obedience in the face of violent coercion and racketeering operations presented in the context of “for the public good”.
They want you to join teams, pick sides and fight amongst yourselves on who should get bulldozed, while they win either way.
Do not fall for their lies and their illusion of choice between two despicable options. Refuse to comply.
the Purple Line is “route 1” (which goes through the Rhoads Family’s forest) and the Yellow line is “route 2” which goes through Laura Cassidy’s forested property
a satellite image close up of the section from “route 1” which cuts through the Rhoads Family’s forest
a satellite image close up of the section from “route 2” which goes through Laura Cassidy’s forested property
I reject both their options.
Both are despicable, disrespectful, unnecessary, ecologically devastating and represent a government enabled corporate attack on people’s homes and our last few forested areas for a project that no one here wants.
Any industrial project that is capable of being built on already deforested farmland instead of cutting through some of the few forests we have left should at the very least be built on fields, not over the bones of murdered elders (old growth trees).
For me personally, I intend on helping all those resisting this duplicitous corporate profiteering dressed up as “necessary” for “the public good” and I call on all those reading this that understand the significance of old growth forest ecology (and how few trees we have left in that age bracket here in southwestern Ontario) to share this far and wide and help rally support to stop this unnecessary, corporation benefitting ecologically degenerative project from going forward.
They call it sustainable development.
The truth is, that is it is greenwashed profitable ecocide.
We need to be doing everything we can to protect these trees and their elder brothers and sisters for future generations.
When I met with Adam Rhoads and his father (their family stewards a patch of Carolinian forest with old growth oak and hickory) and walked through the area that is intended to be decimated (for the new Windsor-to-Lakeshore Transmission Line) if this unnecessary and unwanted oligarch benefitting/ecology decimating project goes forward. I surveyed part of the forest in the intended path of the powerline and found 3 white oaks over 250 years in age and the biggest chinquapin oak I’ve ever seen (11.5 feet in circumference at 5 feet above ground, shown in picture above). I`ll be going back to get more measurements and document endangered species.
We are told that electric vehicles are “sustainable” and A.I. data centers are “necessary” and yet they want to sacrifice some of the last mother trees we have left in the Oak family here in Southwestern Ontario on the alter of “sustainable development”.
Also, electric cars require lithium and cobalt mining, which requires destroying forests and poisoning vast watersheds in the north (read this for more information on the impacts of lithium mining).
We have less than one quarter of one percent of the original Carolinian forests left in our county.
It’s time we said enough is enough and stood up to protect what’s left!
Oaks are keystone species, meaning that the whole web of life is disproportionately dependent on them in the regions they reign. If the healthy elder oaks suffer, everyone suffers. If the healthy elder oaks are happy, everyone is happy.
looking up in to the canopy and into the crown of one of the old growth white oaks that is in the proposed route 1 for the powerline
Oaks are home to more species of Nature’s creatures than any other tree. They foster a spectrum of mosses, lichens, insects, fungi, birds and critters within their sturdy branches. Woodpeckers, owls, bats, deer, squirrels, mice, wrens and jays all find food and shelter from this giving tree. Oak’s relationship with various funguses and ectomycorrhizae plays an important role in the establishment of healthy and fertile soil, and Oak forests are an ideal place to look for high value medicinal and gourmet mushrooms. Holes and crevices in the tree’s bark become nesting spots for beetles and large varieties of bugs. Over 5000 species of insects find their homes within Oak ecosystems.
looking through Hickory leaves up into the Canopy of an old growth Chinquapin oak (Mother Tree) on the Rhoads family property in Woodslee, Ontario which stands within one of the proposed routes for the powerline and will be cut down by Hydro One if the project goes forward
When resources begin to run short, as they always will, cooperation and strategies that promote stability-strategies perfected by forest ecosystems—will be favored by evolution. The breadth and depth of these reciprocal symbioses are especially well developed in old-growth forests, which are designed for the long haul. Industrial forestry, resource extraction, and other aspects of the human sprawl of modernity are like salmon-berry thickets-swallowing up land, reducing biodiversity, and simplifying ecosystems at the demand of wendigo societies always bent on having more.
In five hundred years we exterminated old-growth cultures and old-growth ecosystems, replacing them with opportunistic culture. The old-growth forest is as stunning in its elegance of function as in its beauty. Under conditions of scarcity, there can be no frenzy of uncontrolled growth or waste of resources. The “green architecture” of the forest structure itself is a model of efficiency, with layers of foliage in a multilayered canopy that optimizes capture of solar energy. If we are looking for models of self-sustaining communities, we need look no further than an old-growth forest. Or the old-growth cultures they raised in symbiosis with them.
While creating an alternative to destructive economic structures is imperative, it is not enough. It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart. Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the economy.
Gratitude (and love for the forest we have left) plants the seed for abundance.
Each of us comes from people who were once indigenous. We can reclaim our membership in the cultures of gratitude that formed our old relationships with the living earth. Gratitude is a powerful antidote to Windigo psychosis. A deep awareness of the gifts of the earth and of each other is medicine. The practice of gratitude lets us hear the badgering of marketers as the stomach grumblings of a Windigo. It celebrates cultures of regenerative reciprocity, where wealth is understood to be having enough to share and riches are counted in mutually beneficial relationships.
Gratitude for all the earth has given us lends us courage to turn and face the Windigo that stalks us, to refuse to participate in an economy that destroys the beloved earth to line the pockets of the greedy, to demand an economy that is aligned with life, not stacked against it.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass).
looking at the Trunk of the same old growth Chinquapin oak (Mother Tree) on the Rhoads family property in Woodslee, Ontario which stands within one of the proposed routes for the powerline and will be cut down by Hydro One if the project goes forward
The Oak tree is truly an entire kingdom unto itself. It is no wonder our ancestors revered this tree and viewed him as sacred.
The tall rooted elder beings of the Oak family offer a sacred reminder of a time before arbitrary lines were drawn in the sand by statists for greed and ego back to an era when many of our ancient ancestors knew the trees intimately and had a reciprocal relationship with them. Long before people were swearing allegiance to kings, queens and flags they were swearing allegiance to the living Earth and recognizing our ancient kin (such as these beings we know as Oaks) and the many gifts they shared with us.
Oaks are revered globally by myriad cultures that recognized their sacred gifts, their fortitude, grace and the wisdom these beings offer our human family. This is for a good reason, as oaks are Keystone species that send out trophic cascading ripple effects of increased biodiversity into the places they grow. Healthy old growth oaks also serve the role of Mother Trees in their forest community.
Research has shown that the biggest and oldest trees in a given forest are the most connected nodes in the forest. These highly-connected hub trees, also known as Mother Trees, share their excess carbon and nitrogen through the mycorrhizal network with the understory seedlings, which can increase seedling survival. These Mother Trees in this way act as central hubs, communicating with the young seedlings around them. In a single forest, a Mother Tree can be connected to hundreds of other trees.
Research has also shown that kin seedlings receive more carbon from Mother Trees than stranger seedlings do. The Mother Tree sends carbon to other seedlings in the neighbourhood as well.
Experiments have also shown that when forests have seen some selective harvesting, the retention of Mother Trees helps the forest regenerate and retain biodiversity, where as the loss of the elder Mother Trees results in a sharp decline in the ability of that forest habitat to support diverse lifeforms. Seeds from the Mother Tree germinate nearby and quickly tap into the fungal web and receive resources that boost their chances of survival.
Additional research has shown that large hub trees (that we call Mother Trees) transmit carbon through the mycorrhizal network to young seedlings in need. The carbon moves along a source-sink gradient, where the larger tree is the source of carbon and the seedling is the sink.
old growth White Oak Mother Tree, on the Rhoads property, in one of the proposed paths for the powerline
In his book titled “The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them” Expert Regenerative Forester and author Peter Wohlleben speaks about the importance of protecting every last one of the Mother Trees we have left by saying:
“The term Mother Tree Comes from forestry. It has been clear for centuries that tree parents play such an important role in raising their offspring that they can be compared to human parents. You might remember from my book The Hidden Life of Trees that a mother tree identifies which neighboring seedlings are hers using her roots. She then, via delicate connections, supports the seedlings with a solution of sugar, a process similar to a human mother nursing her child. Shade provided by parents is another form of care, as it curbs the growth of youngsters living under their crowns.
Without the shade and exposed to full sunlight, the young trees would shoot up and expand the width of their trunks so quickly they’d be exhausted after just a century or two. If, however, the young trees stand strong in the shadows for decades-or even centuries-they can live to a great age.
Shade means less sunlight and therefore considerably less sugar. The slow pace of life gently imposed by the mother tree is no accident, as generations of foresters have observed.
Just a few decades ago, prevailing scientific opinion held that genetic changes are possible only through mutations and not through experience.
This is where epigenetics come into play—in other words, the processes that determine which genes are turned on or turned off. You can imagine DNA as an encyclopedia that contains all there is to know about how a human body is constructed and how it works. Epigenetic processes are a bit like bookmarks that help ensure the encyclopedia opens only to those pages that need to be read. Inserting bookmarks happens with the help of methyl groups.
Trees have the capacity to pass along experiences too.
The idea that adaptation in trees takes forever because of their long lives and the correspondingly long time between generations proved to be incorrect. As tree parents continue to learn until their dying breath, the seeds they produce are equipped with all their latest survival strategies. Tree off-spring, therefore, do not need to start from scratch and learn from all their mistakes-thanks to epigenetics. This means that the grand old age of mother trees is not a disadvantage.
On the contrary, it is a great advantage as it means older is wiser with better-adapted offspring. Young trees profit from the centuries-long experience of their parents-and this brings us back to the reproduction-happy hares. A hare lives ten years at most and therefore can pass relatively few skills along epigenetically. This time, it is the trees that clearly hold the advantage.
The easiest way to ascertain what trees have learned in their lifetimes is to look at the outermost branch tips. The knowledge of a lifetime is concentrated in the most recent growth on an old tree. In the case of the Ivenack oaks, this is an impressive one thousand years’ worth of learning. The surprising differences in the leaves that indicate the change from pedunculate oak (when it’s moister) to sessile oak (when it’s drier) are mostly found in the upper branches in the crown—the youngest branches on the tree. It would be fascinating to know whether the acorns on these branches grow into young trees that are better adapted to drought than trees that sprout from acorns growing on older branches.
Recent research suggests this may well be the case, and that would be further proof that trees can adapt to climate change much faster than we have suspected up until now.”
World-recognized author, biochemist, botanist, and Gaelic ancestral knowledge keeper Diana Beresford-Kroeger describes Mother Trees in her book To Speak for the Trees with the following illustrative description :
“Imagine you’re walking through a field. The sun is out, but it’s not too hot. The ground is soft underfoot, a mix of meadow grasses, wildflowers, ferns and other plants. Every so often you cross a small patch of bare soil and the rich smell of earth rises to your nostrils. Once, as you step over just such a patch, an acorn falls from your pocket out onto the ground.
Fate smiles on this lost nut. Its shell and cupule part ways and the seed inside finds a welcoming home. Over days and then weeks, perhaps months, it splits its testa and pushes its single green shoot up out of the soil, it sprouts two thick leaves and soaks up sunlight and carbon dioxide, turning them into energy and fibre. It grows and grows-from seedling to sapling to mature tree. It reaches high into the sky and spreads, the tallest living thing around for some distance.
That height invites birds on migration, offering welcome rest and respite on their north-south, south-north treks. These visitors have feathers coated in an oil that contains the reduced form of vitamin D. As the sun hits this oil, it irradiates the molecule, breaking the second bond and turning it into a full form of active vitamin D. Perched on the now-mature oak, the birds preen their feathers, ingesting the vitamin, which helps them fight off disease and produce a greater number of viable eggs. In the process, they dislodge seeds nestled in their plumage and caught in their feet. They excrete a few in their droppings, as well.
The seeds fall to earth on the skirt of the oak and a certain number, like the acorn years and years ago, sprout. The fallen leaves of the tree, over time, have created a humus soil, rich in humic acid, which helps the roots of the new seedlings absorb water and nutrients. When it is strong and able, the oak even passes carbon and hydrogen in the form of food through its roots to the plants around it, particularly its own offspring, in an exchange akin to breastfeeding. Its offerings benefit only select species, but the list is long. In addition to other trees, ferns, lichens and mosses also benefit from the oak’s generosity.
Old growth Chinquapin Oak Mother Tree on the Rhoads family property, which also falls within one of the proposed routes for the powerline, and which hydro one will attempt to clearcut if they go forward
Many trees thrive in the shade, waiting generations to grow. Each of those species is responsible for sustaining forty different species of insect. The oak is a metropolis and in the three hundred years it has taken it to reach maturity, it has also given rise to fresh, virgin forest.
As I sat and watched these trees for extended periods of time, sometimes returning day after day for a matter of weeks, it was obvious that they were focal points of activity and vitality. They were epicentres of life in the forest, so I started referring to them as “epicentre trees.” Later, when I’d learned more about the role they play in their environment, I changed my terminology. I now call them “mother trees.” Mother trees are dominant trees within any forest system.
They are the trees that, when mature, serve up the twenty-two essential amino acids, the three essential fatty acids, the vegetable proteins and the complex sugars, be they singular or in a polymeric form of complexity, that feed the natural world.
This menu protects the ability for all of nature to propagate, from the world of insects to the pollinators, to birds, to the small and larger mammals.
The mature mother tree infuses the air around the canopy with aerosols, some as an invitation, others for protection. Mother trees can feed and protect other trees within the expanse of their canopy. They are the leaders of the community we call forests. And across the globe, forests represent life.
In addition, mother trees produce pollen in the spring and begin to flush out aerosols into the atmosphere. As the aerosols rise with the warming air, they meet water vapour and blend with it. This is the cradle of the creation of our weather patterns. The human family thrives on a plentiful supply of rainwater-all from the bounty of mother trees.
The genetic information of a mother tree is perhaps the most important living library there is. The knowledge of how to build virgin forest from a single acorn. The knowledge that we might need to save our lives and our planet.”
Hydro One (our local monopolized power company racket) and the government intend on weaponizing their expropriation / “land easement” laws to use violent coercion to steal land from a large group of home owner’s land in Southwestern Ontario to build a (completely unnecessary) high voltage power line and some of the last old growth “mother” oak trees left in our region stand in their intended path.
Oak trees are fountains of life that provide a home for countless insects, winged beings, shelter for amphibians and essential fatty acids to support robust mammalian populations. Oaks become a pillar that can support a forest ecosystem to unfold into resplendent expressions of vast biodiversity in fungi, deep soil life and multitudes of four legged mammals that nurture their young from the nourishment these trees provide (yes they are Mother Trees in the truest sense).
”As we stare down the climate crisis, attempting to come to grips with its current and future impacts, biodiversity brings blessings to buffer our world. Trees have their own history. They have already lived through ages of crisis on Earth, and they have developed strategies and solutions to cope. Many families of trees acted as pioneers in the past, and they can do so again, since the memory of past climate events is maintained as a living library of lessons within their physical structures. The trees epigenetics will guide their growth into a more stable situation.
Maintaining existing biodiversity, particularly in native forests, is so vital because not all trees are equal in their ability to survive change. The story of any adventurous species—by this I mean trees or whole forests that venture into and then survive in unfamiliar and unforgiving environments—is a formidable one.
The real genius of trees, though—one that has gone under the radar of science-is not to be found in any specific adaptation, but in the way adaptations in a forest mesh together. Each tree of a forest holds a unique set of genes, much like each individual member of the human family. So, a native forest with its full range of biodiversity is able to generate even more change and adaptation. No two species are exactly alike; nature and nurture see to that. Biodiversity enhances nurture in nature; a mother tree will recognize her saplings and protect them with an underground plume of chemistry, strengthening them so more will survive.
The oaks of the northern hemisphere, all six hundred species of them, seem to be leading the pack to stop climate change. A mature oak has an enormous ability to sequester carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, even under the severest growing conditions. Luckily, the genus of Quercus, of the Fagacee, or beech, family, has spread itself comfortably across the entire hemisphere, still represented in most northern forest systems and valued for its merits of biodiversity alone.
old growth white oak on the Rhoads family property (in the path of the intended powerline)
They have also developed botanical “sunglasses” to cope with the glare from brilliant sun-light. These glasses are worn on the upper surface of the leaf, a cuticular layer with all the transparency of silica glass. The layer is a resin, and this resinous pane allows the sun to penetrate without injury to the internal organelles of the leaf. These reflectors help with water loss also.
Oaks have learned to live and stay healthy under the maximum ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and it is this adaptation that has turned the tree into a warrior to fight climate change. The tree manufactures twin biochemicals, quercetin and quercitron, that course through the entire canopy of the tree. When photons from the sun hit the canopy, they displace electrons from the chlorophyll in a one-on-one ratio. The spare electrons produced from these collisions are captured by the quercetin and quer-citron, and slowed, becoming pye electrons that are fun-nelled into photosynthesis. This action is called quantum lifting. In the green hands of nature, the small and very small actions of photons and electrons count because of their high volume during the sunshine hours of the day. It could be, then, that in the leaves of every oak some of the most pertinent answers to the question of free energy are staring us in the face. We need to learn to pay attention to what’s standing in front of us.
Unlike many other species, most oak trees will tolerate lime, provided the soil is deep and rich. They produce acorns, still for sale in markets around the world, meaning they are also anti-famine trees. Acorns can be ground into four, roasted like peanuts or just simply baked, though some species need the addition of potash or potassium hydroxide to leach out the bitterness of the tannins.
The anatomy of the oak is important too. As the tree ages, the horizontal branches sometimes extend towards the ground, where they take root and spawn secondary canopies into the open edge of the drip line. This means mature oaks need much more ground than other trees, but their considerable canopies make them extremely stable in a wind-storm, and their horizontal pattern of growth further buttresses their branches. This will be even more important to withstand the newly hydrated atmosphere of climate change, which will bring more violent ice storms and very wet snow loads, from large and heavy snowflakes. The oak’s roots, too, can withstand flooding because of their size and extensive anchoring in the subsoil. Oaks are also extraordinarily drought-tolerant. A well-grown tree can be expected to live approximately a thousand years.
A native forest is a special place, anywhere on the planet. It is special because it is the centre of a unique form of plant democracy. Each tree species within a forest is a member of a family of trees with different traits. These are evident above ground in the architecture of the tree and its canopy, and in features as particular as the leaf scar, a tree’s fingerprint. These families all live together. Combined, their virtues make a whole that is beneficial to the human family and to all living systems. They cooperate in many known and unknown ways. Underground, a forest is even more of an enigma. Beneath the soil, all business is conducted in darkness, and this causes problems for science. Still, we know there are many players as the trees of a forest interface with almost all of creation using the pattern language of DNA and RNA. Though the apical meristems at the tip of each root, with their protective sheaths, are not fully understood, they are the exquisite boundaries of chemical exchange. Native forests, then, are webs of unfathomable complexity, each one unique to its geography and among environments on the earth. They are far from fully understood and cannot possibly be re-created, and yet humans have hacked and razed them with abandon.”
- Diana Beresford-Kroeger (from her book: “Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests”)
(I do not necessarily share all of Diana’s views on anthropogenic climate change but I feel that her studies into oak trees hold merit regardless of her view on carbon dioxide and its role in climate change)
Acorns are an abundant wild food source around the world, and a single tree can produce more than 2,000 pounds of nuts. Rich in calories and micronutrients, eating acorns was once a part of life for humans everywhere that oaks grow.
Up to 2300 species are known to be associated with oak, and that doesn’t include all of the fungi, or any of the bacteria and other microorganisms which create a symbiotic home with the oak.
The 2300 species consist of some 38 bird species, 229 bryophytes, 108 fungi, 1178 invertebrates, 716 lichens, and 31 mammals. Of these species, 320 are found only on oak trees, and a further 229 species are rarely found on species other than oak.
There are so few healthy old growth trees within this small Carolinian zone of Canada left to pass on their immense resilience via their genetic memory to the next generations, cutting even one single one of them for industrial expansion is completely unacceptable and anyone with even a basic understanding of forest ecology should be appalled by them even suggesting we should sacrifice 200 year old plus “Mother” Oak trees so that corporations can built electric cars, Data Centers and more unnecessary toxic hydroponic greenhouses that suffocate the living earth for profiting the few.
The government describes this project in the document linked below as a project intended to “Enable economic growth within the manufacturing and agri-business sectors, including large-scale industry with higher electrical needs relative to past industrial users.”
As many of you may have been hearing, AI Data centers are being built all over the place, sucking up water and polluting the air so that people can talk to machines. In this article titled “AI-powered data centres to push Ontario’s energy demand to new heights” you will see how powerline projects like this are not just for the Electric Car corporations and chemical soaked energy thirsty hydroponic greenhouse barons to engage in profiteering, they are also being built in preparation for meeting the obscene power demands of AI Data Centers.
“Colonizers must religiously convince themselves and others that the world is already dead to justify their ongoing violence against the Earth and existence. In the face of global ecological ruin, some attempt to further convince themselves that killing the Earth just a little bit less is an appropriate response. This is exemplified with climate justice movement organizing, where grand proposals of a “green economy” or a less ecologically devastating form of capitalism is the means to achieve human survival with a habitable planet. “Big Green” non-profit corporations and so-called non-governmental organizations attempt to stifle dissent and make excuses for perpetual industrial exploitation of the forests, wetlands and living Earth. In their recycling of capitalism into climate justice (electric vehicles will save the planet rhetoric) we still end up scrubbing their palaces green, resting our heads in green prisons, and sustaining unsustainable lifestyles.
“Just transition” is a strategy of economic redemption to further preserve ways of being that are unsustainable by design, you can’t lobby away colonialism and capitalism, no matter how hard you try. The “Green New Deal,” like its parent “Green Economics” are meant to sustain the colonial project and the capitalist relations whose interest lay within the specificity of continuing the ongoing exploitation (destruction) of the whole of the Earth, while cashing in of course.
Also, there is a monolithic assumption about indigenous politics. Particularly that we all care about the Earth. This assumption establishes Indigenous identity as a virtue. But there are Indigenous fascists, capitalists, conservatives, socialists, anarchists, nihilists, extractivists etc. Some spend more time than others (particularly academics) mired in arguments of what system is best for Indigenous “futurity” or “survivance.”
Largely ignoring that the origin of the assumption must be contended: the imposition of colonial politics. Anthropological and social assertions of Indigenous “politics” steeped in the stench of the progressivisms of modernity, have dominated how we think about social organizing today. Indigenous organizations measure their accomplishments based on how well they’re recognized, funded, and included in colonial order.
Civilization has no relatives, only captives … Its survival is expansive unending hunger, a hunger that has been named colonialism; a vast consumption that feeds on spirit, and all life.
This is the illiteracy of Colonialism ; it cannot envision itself anywhere but at the center of the progression of human understanding and meaning. It cannot truly speak of justice or freedom without vomiting the half-chewed bones of forests, extinct species, and generations yet to come.
It convulses in cognitive distortions, it demands quantifications and quotas as it cries out “climate justice” while its breath carries the stench of oil and methane. It constructs “sustainable prisons” and demands lithium and uranium to maintain the world that it is burning.
On these lands it appears that no other history exists but that which justifies occupation. This is the meticulously constructed myth of progress asserted as modernity. Its putrefying gaze fixated on positioning experiences in its limited zones of post and pre. It is both the consequence and goal of what it proposes as an order to dominate and homogenize all ways of being, this proclaimed garishly as civilization. A fevered monster that rabidly consumes its own flesh. It has not ceased destroying long enough to sense that the land suffers, that the land holds trauma and there are consequences. Refusing to read the sunsets. Not listening to the ground. Spruce bows beckoning to commune, it does not see.
This is the illiteracy of Colonialism.“
- Klee Benally (a Dine land defender and musician, from his book No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred)
Sadly, as Klee hints at in the quote above and as I documented in this article, there are some people with indigenous blood linked to Turtle Island that have been fully mentally colonized by the residential school and boarding school programs to the point where they now actively collaborate with and profit from the industrial colonial pillaging of the land and forests their ancestor’s fiercely fought to protect.
To those that support the clearcutting of old growth forests for profit: If you continue to worship money instead of having reverence for your living Mother Earth you may have to find out one day (when the last ancient forest watershed is cut down and the last river turned into a muddy flood zone and the last fish habitat crippled) that you cannot eat money. Your current course of action is irreconcilable with the spiritual teachings of your ancestors.
If you want to be like the greedy pale men that arrived on your shores centuries ago and join them in pillaging the earth for profit, than you are sentencing your own grandchildren to an experience that is worse than the residential schools.
If you chop down the old growth forests for profit now, poison the waters and destroy the fish and wild animal habitat in the name of “progress” and “economic growth” you will in effect be forcing them to abandon traditional lifepaths and immigrate into concrete “sustainable” prisons in the city to work for the man.)
You may always remain indigenous by blood, but if you choose profits over protecting the old growth forests, rivers and ocean your ancestors stewarded, you no longer walk a path of lived indigeneity.
Many locally (whether they were born here or not and regardless of ancestry) are getting confused by government propaganda surrounding these powerline projects.
The proponents of these projects will try to gaslight you and tell you that they these massive corporation empowering powerline projects will be creating jobs for local people, but the truth is automation is quickly becoming the norm in large scale manufacturing high tech agriculture and those few jobs they do provide are typically outsourced to imported workers from other countries on work visas that can be paid an absolute minimum and easily fired and replaced if they complain about unsafe or unfair working conditions. So this is not about providing jobs for the locals and the vast majority of the electricity these proposed powerlines will be carrying will not be for residential us, so it is not a project for the benefit of everyday people aka “the public good”, it is a project for increasing the profit margins of those that are already obscenely rich and it will mean sacrificing some of the last forests and elder trees we have left in the county.
For those that think this powerline is absolutely necessary (which it isn’t) it seems obvious to me that path of the powerline should be only going over land that is already deforested.
No one should have to sacrifice their farmland or their homes for projects like this (for “fair” compensation against their will) if they do not want to, but above all else, it is unthinkable that they would clearcut intact forest and fell healthy old growth oaks in this place that has so little forest and so few old growth Oak left for a powerline.
“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies.”
- Sophie Scholl ( born May 9, 1921, was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active in the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother, Hans. Due to the passivity, apathy, cowardice and inaction of her fellow citizens to stop it, Statists executed her by guillotine at the age of 21 years.
Today we are witnessing Statists are fascistically chopping down ancient trees that are the shared cultural heritage of our great great grandchildren for a quick profit today. Our government and their corporate partners are waging a fascistic war on the ecosystems we depend on to survive for short term profits for the rich. They are engaging in ecological imperialistic fascism, a war on nature.
Both types of violence are appalling and both were and are allowed to happen because people refused (and now continue to refuse) to risk standing up and defending those that cannot defend themselves.
When I engage in activist and educational efforts to protect old growth trees and ancient forests against exploitation for short term profits I will sometimes get people calling me a tree hugger, knowing the history of the term, I take this as a compliment.
“Humanity stands at a precipice. Ecologically, the uncertainty arises because every aspect of the dominant model of thinking and living is destroying the earth’s capacity to support our lives. The erosion and extinction of our old growth forests, species, the destruction of soils and water, and climate chaos, are wreaking havoc on the conditions necessary to continue as members of the earth community. The extractive model of economic development and growth, of corporate control and the greed economy are not just destroying nature, they are destroying our humanity which is the human capacity for solidarity, compassion, and the ability to take care of each other.
Through the illusions and abstractions that the powerful have created and imposed on the rest of humanity, especially over the last two centuries of the rise of industrialism and the mechanical, reductionist mind, we are losing our capacity to not just sustain life ecologically but also to sustain life socially, as a community. But going off the precipice, towards extinction, is not inevitable. We can choose to walk away from the mechanistic world of invented constructions, and free ourselves from the forces and paradigms that have brought us to it. We can realise that we are members of the earth community and that the earth has an amazing capacity and potential to rejuvenate and renew; and since we are part of the earth, not separate from her, we share that capacity and potential. A consciousness of our power to be the change we want to see, as Gandhi said, forms the basis for cultivating hope, love, and compassion in these times of despair, fear and hate. Within the crises that have brought us to the precipice lie the seeds of hope and freedom, the seeds to renew our humanity and our earth citizenship. The crisis of survival that we face today is a result of the domination of an extractive economy, imposed by artificial separations constructed by the mechanical mind, and the false assumption that greed is a virtue to be rewarded by society. While pursuing my PhD, I became involved as a volunteer in the Chipko movement, a nonviolent, peaceful response to the large-scale deforestation that was taking place in the Garhwal Himalaya by peasant women from the region, who came out in defence of the forests. Chipko means ‘to hug, ‘to embrace’. Women declared that they would hug the trees to protect them-loggers would have to kill them before they felled the trees.
Chipko woman in India, protecting their old growth oaks against exploitation
While the mechanical view forms the basis of mastery and conquest over nature, and hence is at the root of the ecological crisis, ecological paradigms have the same underlying understanding of an interconnected universe. From the trees we learn unconditional love and unconditional giving. From the dry leaves that fall we learn about the cycle of life, the law of return, as leaves become humus and soil, protecting the earth, recycling nutrition and water, recharging springs, wells and streams. Forests also teach us ‘enoughness, as the principle of equity, enjoying the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation.”
- Vandana Shiva (from her book: Oneness Vs. the 1%)
So yes, I am a tree hugger and proud to be labelled as such.
Knowing the etymological roots of the term I always get a warm feeling in my heart when people called me a tree hugger. Most do not mean it as a compliment, but in their ignorance they are actually bestowing a great honor in referring to someone with that term. The term tree hugger was born of the beautiful courage, compassion and gumption of brave women putting their bodies on the line defending the sacred oak forests of the Himalayas.
It has its roots in a movement where women that depended on the oak forests of the Himalayas for foraging food, medicine , animal fodder, soil stabilization and water saw the Indian government clearcutting their livelihood and source of symbiotic resilience with the land and they decided to hug the trees and refused to move.
It became known as the Chipko movement in India, which saw rural women, famously hugging trees to prevent commercial logging in the 1970s Himalayas. This was a unprecedented powerful act of nonviolent ecological resistance against ecocide known as “hugging the trees” (Chipko means to hug).
These courageous women inspired the later organized movements to defend the sacred (stopping old growth logging through chaining themselves to trees on the west coast of the US and Canada).
The Chipko women inspired generations to stand up for our sacred forests resulting in brave young women like Julia Butterfly Hill climbing up into that Redwood in the 90-s and putting her life on the line embracing that tree for nearly two years to ensure she was protected.
I will tell you that as someone that was raised among the ancient trees in BC, that the Chipko women were a catalyst of truth, courage and healing, embraced by those dear to me here in Canada in their working to defend the sacred on the West Coast. I work to honor their legacy now here in southern Ontario
Those wise (yet not conventionally “educated”) Chipko women continue to inspire courageous action today where women and men are embracing ancient trees in the Walbran valley and Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, and here in SW Ontario defending the sacred in the face of government and corporate greed.
The human beings that inspired the term “tree hugger” with their actions chose to live in a way that sends out a prayer into the universe and declares what a human being is and what we are capable of when we choose love over fear. I am grateful for their gift to this world and though I may not have put my life on the line as courageously as those women in India, I am honored to do what I can and honored when someone calls me a “tree hugger”.
These are some of the mantras of the valiant and courageous women of the Chipko movement.
“We hugged the trees and felt their pain. Our bond with nature is our strength.”
“Forests are like our mother; you will have to shoot us before you can cut them down.”
“Ecology is permanent economy.”
“Don’t destroy what you can’t create.”
“Chipko is not merely a protest but a way of life that respects nature.”
“Let the trees live, let the rivers flow, and let the air be pure.”
“The forest is a community, not a commodity”
So next time you are disparagingly accused of being a “tree hugger” by an ecologically illiterate capitalistic statist suffering from spiritual poverty, you can smile and genuinely tell them “thank you, what a kind thing to say!”
Even if you are not able to hug the trees physically to protect them against exploitation, you can support those that are engaging in that sacred work from a far and hug them in spirit.
Please help us to defend these trees by sharing this and with the support of a donation via the link below.
Thank you for caring about our elder rooted kin and thank you to those that share this in your various networks and platforms
Here in Canada pillaging and exploitation is the modus operandi of the governments (federal and provincial, which are both in bed with corporate profiteers) and its time we said enough is enough.
Its time we started living as if our children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depend on it, because they do.
I created this petition so those that feel moved can sign to support us in our efforts to speak for and stand up for the elder trees (whether you are nearby or in a different country your voice matters).
Please read, sign and share the petition linked below to lend your voice to speak up for the trees.
That conditioning obscures the reality of such an action from being seen for what it really is, for if someone without the proper uniform and papers were to arrive and demand that we leave our property “or else” and that they will give us “fair compensation” for the land, many of us would see them as organized criminals, and perhaps take physical action to defend the land we are stewarding. Yet, when this group of humans that call themselves “government” engage in this same behavior we lay down, move aside and accept their meager bribes telling ourselves “there is nothing you can do”.
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
There comes a time when the “sustainable development” and “necessary for the public good” rhetoric becomes so transparent and obviously a smokescreen for nefarious exploitation of the sacred lands we steward, that we must take a stand and say Enough Is Enough. Now, is that time.
If you would like to support our continued efforts in defending these trees against being clearcut for corporate exploitation of the land, you can make donation to help with the costs of raising public awareness and documenting the endangered species in the forest via the link below:
As I have written about in the past, we live in a time of such prolific, ubiquitous and permeating brainwashing regarding the supposed necessity and legitimacy of the state, that many people are like a fish born into murky polluted waters, thinking that is normal as they have never known anything else.
(This post serves as the 36th post which is part of the (Stacking Functions in the Garden, Food Forest and Medicine Cabinet : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Apothecary series).
We have all been told a story about the glorious accent from “primitive” “hunter-gatherers” to “civilized” city building people in various ways, but few of us ever stop to really think about and look into where all the materials come from that make this modern way of life
Great suffering has been inflicted on the original people’s of Turtle Island in the name of Statist imperialistic, anthropocentric, industrial expansion of Empire. We also live in a time when some First Nation sell outs in so called “Canada” have decided to internalize the sickness of greed and the parasitic relationship with the Earth that is capitali…
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An addendum on Indigenous people and their potential to influence how this powerline proceeds (or does not) :
I have reached out to the group of local indigenous people whose ancestors historically stewarded this region to ask for their support in advocating that the route for this powerline be at the very least altered to not require clearcutting old growth trees and forest, but I have not heard back yet. There may be some conflict of interest between the stated ethical values of said First Nation group and potential financial incentives offered related to the high voltage powerlines. Hopefully that is not something that will influence their decision making and it will not prevent them from doing the right thing and standing up to protect the few old growth trees we have left here for the 7th generation that comes after us and they will get back to me and be supportive of pressuring the government to change the proposed routes or scrap the project all together. Regardless of if they respond and how they respond, I will be standing up to speak for the trees and the 7th generation that comes after us.
This was very moving to read. It's why I've always hated the phrase "natural resources," as if the value of Nature is measured only by what we extract from it. You are right to fight so hard for that fraction of a percent of old growth that remains in Ontario. Here in Pennsylvania we have 0.0% left.
Long live the Trees! Thank you, Gavin, for all the time, effort, and Love you give to them.
From your Nature Sister to the North? South? You really have me confused on that one... says a seriously geography- and direction-challenged person. :) XO 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲
This was very moving to read. It's why I've always hated the phrase "natural resources," as if the value of Nature is measured only by what we extract from it. You are right to fight so hard for that fraction of a percent of old growth that remains in Ontario. Here in Pennsylvania we have 0.0% left.
Long live the Trees! Thank you, Gavin, for all the time, effort, and Love you give to them.
From your Nature Sister to the North? South? You really have me confused on that one... says a seriously geography- and direction-challenged person. :) XO 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲