Tree of the Week showcases some of the biggest and most beautiful trees in the GTA, as compiled by Megan Ogilvie. Here Brien Lewis tells us why he and his family have long loved a magnificent and slow-growing copper beech that looms over Taddle Creek Park in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood.

I grew up near this beautiful copper beech and my father still lives just a short walk from its base in what has been our family home since 1975.

The beech, one of the focal points of Taddle Creek Park, has long been in good company. It grows in a space between what were once the sites of the homes of Sir Frederick Banting, the codiscoverer of insulin, and Beatrice Worsley, who co-wrote software for the world’s first commercially available computer.

The tree is also just a couple of hundred metres away from the one-time residence of former prime minister Lester B. Pearson. Passersby can read about these historic homes on plaques placed around the park.

Taddle Creek Park was originally designed by Paul Martel, an architect who served as president of the Annex Residents’ Association. His late wife, the noted Canadian artist Joan Willsher-Martel, is memorialized by a red oak tree that was recently planted in the park.

These days, in addition to play areas and water features, Taddle Creek Park has a lovely, curving pathway that provides a shortcut for many people as they walk between Bloor St. and the St. George subway station.

The park is a favourite destination for people walking their dogs. I have fond memories from my youth of evening strolls with my father, Joe, and our spitz-Samoyed mix. Our family called her Samantha Bowzer-Lewis because of her noble bearing and arching, fluffy white tail. But really she was just Sam. Those evening walks were an important bonding time for a teenage boy and his dad and I know Sam enjoyed her time exploring the park, too.

In my younger days, during the late 1970s, the largest green portion of the park was flooded in winter to create a skating area. There were no boards or painted lines like in a true hockey rink, just snowbanks and our scattered hats, gloves or broken branches that served as goalposts.

In the summer, I gathered with neighbourhood kids for a game of Frisbee football or to play catch.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I now know that the magnificent copper beech was a silent sentinel throughout my childhood.

I sometimes wonder how many children the beech has seen grow up? Or the number of older folks who sit on the park’s benches? I also wonder whether the tree misses them, this older generation, when they stop coming to the park. Perhaps the beech is comforted by new visitors and new regulars, for the park is seldom empty.

This beech has special meaning to our family and friends since it is the final destination for a token amount of my late mother’s ashes, which we gently placed under its spreading crown in accordance with her wishes. She made that decision some 20 years ago, and never wavered from it.

On the day of her memorial gathering, in June 2018, my father and I went at sunrise to the park and sprinkled some ashes around the base of the tree. I remember hearing a remarkable chorus of birdsong that seemed to welcome and cheer us as we performed our duty. It was as if the birds knew our purpose, and I made a recording of their joyous music with my phone.

Later that afternoon I played the recording at my mother’s memorial. I still have the birdsong on my phone and occasionally play it so I can think of mom and her avian honour guards.

In June, a group of women went to Taddle Creek Park to honour my mother. This group, a reunion of friends who attended St. Hilda’s College at the University of Toronto during the mid-1960s, came from New Zealand, Florida and across Ontario. On that summer afternoon they gathered under the shade of the copper beech to reminisce about their school days and to remember my mom.

It’s for these reasons, and many others, that I hope that with a little luck and love, “our” copper beech will overlook the Annex for decades — and hopefully centuries — to come.

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