Vancouver marks a century of its blossoming pink cherry trees

Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival founder Linda Poole. (Courtesy: VCB)

If Vancouver’s blossoming cherry trees could talk, they would wax lyrical about their long and storied history like old grandmothers reflecting on a lifetime of memories. This year marks a century since the trees, now synonymous with spring in Vancouver, were first introduced – and there’s much to look back on.

A gift from the mayors of Japan’s Kobe and Yokohama, the blossom trees, five hundred of the Ojochin variety, were first given to the Vancouver Park Board to be planted at Stanley Park’s cenotaph to honour Japanese-Canadian veterans of the First World War.

“When I see those cherry trees every spring, my heart goes out to Japan,” says Linda Poole, founder of the annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival.

Poole established the Cherry Blossom Festival, which takes place between March 26 and April 28 and is now in its 19th year, with a hope that the public would see them as more than just beautiful blooms and instead as a “symbol of international friendship.”

She said she hopes people will reflect on the key figures who aided in their blossoming throughout the city, of which there have been many throughout the 100 years of their existence in Vancouver.

According to Poole, Vancouverites can thank the brazenness of the mother of famed architect Arthur Erickson for the blooms that litter the residential streets of the city.

“They both lived on a big boulevard, I think in Shaughnessy, and his mother called the park board to say she didn’t like the non-flowering trees on the street, and she suggested planting flowering cherries,” she says.

“All the neighbors thought it was beautiful, and more and more people requested to plant cherry trees on their street.”

There were other philanthropists in the city who aided in the flowering efforts, including Bunjiro and Kimi Uyeda, an immigrant couple who donated 1,000 cherry trees in 1935 to celebrate Vancouver’s Golden Jubilee. Most recently, in 2010, the Honorable Dr. David Lam gifted 100 Akebono cherry trees that now set the backdrop for the Cherry Blossom Festival’s multiple events held in the park that bears his name.

Poole says it is difficult to pinpoint just how many cherry trees are across Vancouver. A few years ago, she managed to make a “good estimation” of around 45,000 trees, just within the city itself, but the number it has grown to since, and the amount within other municipalities, will have likely surpassed that by a few extra thousand, she says.

What she does know for certain is that of those 45,000-odd trees there are 54 different varieties, and the first wave of colour that hits Vancouver is from the Akebono cherry tree, which typically blooms in late March or early April, and begins pink before transitioning into a blush of white.

With the festival about to get underway, Linda says she’s “on pins and needles” waiting for David Lam Park to come into bloom. To see them at their finest, Vancouver needs consecutive sunny warm days of about 16 degrees. For the flowers to stay the balmy weather then needs to linger. If there is no wind or rain to bring down the delicate blossoms, they should hang in place for around two weeks, she says.

Despite the gloomy weather as of late, Poole says she predicts they will truly “pop” this Friday, and when they do, the mood of people in Vancouver will uplift alongside them.

“It’s just amazing how, when people are under those blossoms, the best comes out of people. They tend to reach out more to other people that are there,” she said.

“The festival, quite honestly, is the friendliest event you’ve ever been to.”