The Ontario Woodlot Association featured Maple Leaves Forever in their quarterly publication, the Woodlander, last month.

Excerpt:

“Ken Jewett, Ontario’s champion of the Canadian maple, celebrated his 90th birthday last month. His Birthday fell on National Tree Day in Canada, a happy coincidence considering Ken’s longstanding commitment to Canadian trees.

Over 20 years ago, Ken realized that the distinctive native maples that once lined the rural roadsides and laneways of Ontario were in decline. Many of these iconic maples had been planted as a result of a government program in the 1870s that gave farmers an incentive to transplant trees from their woodlots alongside rural roads and property lines. This gave rise to a legacy of quintessentially Canadian native maple-lined roads in rural Ontario.

With these trees beginning to die off, Ken felt a strong desire to save and promote Canada’s arboreal emblem, the maple tree, as a symbol of national pride and identity, and restore a part of Canada’s natural heritage.

Ken founded Maple Leaves Forever in 1997 and formalized its establishment in 2000. For the last 20 years, Maple Leaves Forever has advocated for and supported the planting of Native Canadian Maples in
increasing numbers across the rural landscape of southern Ontario…”

Warm thanks to Niagara Escarpment Views magazine, who published a beautiful four-page feature on Maple Leaves Forever and our founder Ken Jewett in their Fall 2020 issue. Free copies of the magazine are available from local businesses and back issues can be viewed at NEViews.ca

Excerpt: “Have you noticed how country roads are lined with big old hardwood trees about 40 feet apart? It’s as if long-ago farmers and landowners were following a landscaping style guide. Yet these trees are not just the result of fashion. There was a financial benefit to planting them. In 1883 the Ontario Tree Planting Act gave 25 cents per tree that was still alive three years after planting.

“But the subsidy applied to roadways, where wind and snow interrupted traffic,” writes Patricia Bowley in her academic paper on farm forestry, published in 2015 in Scientia Canadensis, 38.

It was an influential piece of legislation. According to the 2018 Environmental Protection Report by the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, that Act resulted in the planting of 75,000 new trees. Often, these
trees were transplanted from interior forests and given space to grow large
on the edges of properties…”

View article as slideshow:

The Globe and Mail posted this article on October 31, 2020: “How the foreign Norway maple tree is changing Canada’s fall palette”.

Link to full article

Excerpt:

“The forest floor of Mount Royal Park in autumn is a many-coloured carpet of maple leaves: orange, yellow, and every kind of red. The scene looks ready for a patriotic postcard.

But woven into this Canadian tapestry is a foreign interloper.

To an untrained eye, it could be mistaken for the sugar maple that adorns our flag and litters Montreal’s famous park with dazzling mulch. But that resemblance is just one of the Norway maple’s cunning tricks…

It has been a slow but steady invasion. A 2003 inventory of saplings on Mount Royal found three times as many Norways as sugars. Within 100 years, 25 per cent of the park’s trees could belong to the species, estimates Christian Messier, a professor of forest ecology and urban forestry at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) and à Montréal (UQAM).”

MLF Founder Ken Jewett responded to the article:

An interesting discussion on the Norway Maple. The choice of planting a Norway or one of the 12 Native Canadian Maples should be a easy one. The NATIVE Canadian Maple is Canada’s ARBORAL Emblem it’s on our flag-a artists concept of a Maple Leaf. The Native Maple truly represents the best of Canada’s environment.

To learn more about this subject go to theoldmanandthetree.com or mapleleavesforever.ca.

Maple Leaves Forever campaigned for seven years to get the NCC to plant Native Maples. In desperation MLF took a half-page ad in the Ottawa Citizen pleading our case.  Dr. Christmanson NCC’s Chair saw our ad and agreed to when called for to only plant Native Maples in Ottawa.

Ken Jewett, Founder
Maple Leaves Forever

MLF Executive Director Deb Pella Keen sent a letter to the editor in response to the article:

Dear Globe and Mail,

Thank you for your informative article about the Norway Maple and its invasion of Mont Royal: “How the foreign Norway maple tree is changing Canada’s fall palette”.

Maple Leaves Forever (MLF) is one organization working to promote the planting of  native Canadian maple species through advocacy, education and a Thank You Rebate program which provides landowners with an incentive to plan native maples across southern Ontario.

In 2014, after years of lobbying by MLF founder, Ken Jewett, MLF printed  a half page letter in the Ottawa Citizen in a final attempt to persuade the National Capital Commission (NCC) to make a formal commitment to planting native maples. As a result,  later that year, NCC issued an official commitment to “planting Canadian native maples on its urban lands, whenever the planting calls for a maple tree.”  

We encourage other jurisdictions to take similar action, and commit to planting native trees, and specifically native maple trees, across Canada wherever they are appropriate.

Sincerely,

Deb Pella Keen, Executive Director
Maple Leaves Forever