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It’s not easy being a tree in the big city.

Especially if that city is Montreal.

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While all urban trees are subject to an undue amount of strife brought on by pollution, the weight of automobiles and people crushing their roots, and the indignities of human contact that include too much handling and bike locks damaging their bark, Montreal’s trees are also victim to two particularly noxious threats: snowplows, which break their skin, and salt, which poisons their circulatory systems.

Saplings are raised for about 10 years in a nursery before they’re considered ready to tackle the pressures of city life, at which point they’re typically shoehorned into a too-small plot of earth in the sidewalk wholly unsuited to a healthy upbringing. The result is the majority of trees downtown or on busy thoroughfares are young, spindly and doomed, more reminiscent of a Charlie Brown Christmas than the shade-bearing guardians that elevate the grand urban boulevards of cities like Paris, Barcelona, Washington and Chicago.