Montreal residents living near the Lachine Canal say they were shocked when Parks Canada chopped down roughly 70 mature trees over a three-day period to make way for a new bike path earlier this week, and are wondering why they weren’t consulted.
“There seemed to be no concern about what was going to go down,” Lawrence Kurtz, a resident, told CTV Montreal. “We talked to someone who was working here and he said, ‘They’re all going to go away. They’re all going to be cut.’”
The bulk of Parks Canada’s work in the area is to strengthen the canal’s retaining wall, as part of broader upgrades to the Lachine Canal over the next five years. Those plans also include a $6 million project to create a one-kilometre-long bike path and rest stop on the north side of the canal.
Kurtz said it was “an indiscriminate cut.”
Parks Canada said in an email statement to CTV Montreal that one-third of the felled trees were diseased or damaged. The remaining trees, it added, were cut to enhance visitors’ experience of the canal.
But residents dispute that characterization of the trees.
“For all these years I’ve been here, they were healthy and they were just as statuesque and as beautiful as those on the south side,” said one resident.
Parks Canada said that it plans to plant 114 new trees in the area, but residents say that it could take decades before they grow to be just like the ones that were cut down this week.
Others argue that Parks Canada is abdicating its responsibility to preserve and protect natural spaces.
“It’s a park. You’re supposed to have trees in a park, right?” said one resident.
With a report from CTV Montreal’s Kelly Greig
