1,000 year old tree falls in Stanley Park

[mr.x]

Ancient cedar falls in Vancouver's Stanley Park
Last Updated: Friday, October 12, 2007 | 5:52 PM ET
CBC News

A red cedar tree believed to be almost 1,000 years old and reputedly the largest of its kind in the world uprooted and toppled from natural causes in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

On Thursday, a part of the tree's root was exposed and clearly saturated with water and rotten. The top of the tree lies so deep in the forest it can't be seen.

Eric Meagher, a Stanley Park maintenance supervisor, said a combination of heavy rain and strong winds on Sunday likely knocked the towering giant over.

"Sure it's sad when you lose it, but that's the cycle of life," Meagher told CBC News Thursday.

"The first photographs we have of it in our archives are 1890 so people were taking photographs of it way back then, and that tree at that time was already hundreds and hundreds of years old," he said.

Before it fell, the mighty tree near Third Beach was 13 metres around at the base and 40 metres tall. It became famous after it was featured in a 1978 National Geographic article, with scores of tourists coming to see it each day.

"It's hard to get your head around the immensity and the enormity of it," said Campbell Miller, who was visiting the area from Ottawa.

Sheri Stewart and her boys, who are visiting from Atlanta, came to the park to look for the giant tree.

"It's sort of a piece of history. A thousand years is a long time," she said.

"I used to live in California and it makes me think of the California redwoods, you know. And the coincidence of having it happen this week when we were here to see it is so odd," Stewart said.





terrible loss, but i guess it's just part of the rainforest cycle. i blame it on the union.

[deasine]

it's so sad to hear that it fell... especially when it made through soo much! (i.e. laset years wind storm).

[Canadian Mind]

It was it's time. if you look at the top picture (and next time I'm in the park, I'll try to confirm this) it appears to have suffered heart rot. Even if the wind didn't take it out in this relatively safe fashion when no one was around, the bugs and rot would have caused it to collapse sooner or later, possibly during a summer day with tourists all crowded around. I dunno what the toll of that would be... kinda like a small skyscraper collapsing.

[Mike K.]

This last storm that happened in late 2006 was blamed on global warming.

But the scientist that was interviewed on one of the local news channels said that the Vancouver area deals with a major storm every 30-40 years, with the one in the mid-20th Century being as destructive as last year's. Anyways, having said that, that tree withstood 25 of these storms!

[raggedy13]

Stanley Park's oldest tree falls down

Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, October 13, 2007

The oldest tree in Stanley Park, a huge Western red cedar that likely dates back to the 11th century, has fallen down.

Stanley Park maintenance superintendent Eric Meagher was driving through the park earlier this week when he realized something missing from the park's skyline.

"I stopped my truck dead in its tracks and put on the four-way flashers so I could take a look," Meagher said. "I thought 'no it couldn't be the big cedar -- that's unbelievable'. But when I went down the trail to Third Beach, there it was. It had come down."

The tree has iconic status in Stanley Park. It has been featured in the National Geographic magazine and the earliest photographs taken in the park in the 1890s show people standing next to it.

"It's a significant tree, the oldest in the park by a long way. When they measured it in 1978 it was 45 feet in [diameter]," he said.

The tree only measured 40 metres (133 feet) in height, which means a substantial part of it has been missing for a long time, he said.

"A tree that size should stand 220-240 feet in height so it was either blasted off by lightning at some time or lost its top during Hurricane Freda in 1962," Meagher said.

He said the tree would be at least 800 to 1,000 years old. The next oldest trees in the park are about 600 years old.

Meagher said the combination of rain on Sunday, which softened the ground, plus an east wind toppled the tree. "If someone would have told me last week that the tree would fall down I would have said it wasn't possible -- the roots looked so solid," he said. "But now you can see it had a serious case of root rot extending into the trunk, which caused it to come down."

The tree will be left where it fell and allowed to rot away naturally, Meagher said.

The tree can be found near the Hollow Tree.

To view it, go to the Hollow Tree parking lot and cross the road to the Third Beach Trail. It is located a short distance down the trail.

gbellett@png.canwest.com

WORLD EVENTS 1,000 YEARS AGO, AROUND THE TIME THE STANLEY PARK CEDAR BEGAN TO GROW

- 1066 -- the Battle of Hastings begins between the Norman army and the English.

- 1077 -- the nomadic Almoravids conquer the kingdom of Ghana in West Africa.

- 1000 on -- the Iroquois become more agricultural and begin farming in the Great Lakes region.

- In China, the Liao Dynasty rules and builds the Yingxian Pagoda in Yingxian County, the largest still standing today.

- Medical Breakthrough

Islamic surgeons in Spain pioneer the use of anesthesia by soaking sponges in narcotics and aromatics.

- Arts and Culture

The world gives birth to Romanesque art.


© The Vancouver Sun 2007