I hope this finds you well and enjoying some recharge time at the end of a unique and challenging year. At Maple Leaves Forever, 2020 was a very successful year as we continued to provide support to those programs that are important to our mandate. This year we supported the planting of almost 1400 native Canadian maples along roadways and laneways across rural southern Ontario! Thank you to all who participated in the program and are caring for those trees as part of our unique cultural landscape.
In addition we supported forest education at the secondary school level with Forests Ontario Envirothon program and the planting of over 175 native maples by the Highway of Heroes project in Picton.
We have had some significant staff changes in 2020 and hope you will join us in congratulating our long time “tree guy”, Carl Mansfield on his retirement. He will be missed, but fortunately for us, he is just a phone call away and continues to support our mission whenever he can!
We are happy to announce that we’ve added two new and very capable part-time members to the MLF team: Andrew Cowell (currently working full-time as a municipal arborist) and Caitlin Ayling (currently working as the IPM and Plant Health Technician at NVK Nurseries).
Andrew, as MLF’s Arborist, will focus on our outreach to the public, handling inquiries about tree care, site conditions etc. Caitlin, as MLF’s Nursery Liaison, will focus on developing nursery partnerships and advocating for native maple production in various forums.
As the winter settles in and the leaves on the forest floor are covered in snow, it is time to pause and be grateful we live in a country that has universal health care and supports native tree planting through various programs such as ours and the recent federal announcement to plant 2 Billion trees over the next 10 years.
We wish you all the best for your good health and good growing conditions for trees in 2021!
– Deb Pella Keen on behalf of the Maple Leaves Forever Team