A Leafy Legacy

It's impossible to envision McGill without seeing the trees, from the centenarian sugar maple in the east quadrant of the lower campus, to the stately black walnut peering in the windows of the Redpath Museum; from the vivid springtime bloom of Blossom Corner at the Morgan Arboretum, to the stark silhouettes of the old catalpas, veterans of the ice storm of '98, standing at either end of the two parks in front of the Macdonald Engineering Building.

While anyone who has spent time on either McGill campus knows the solace offered by their lushness and cool shelter, few will know their history. But behind many of McGill's trees -- hundreds populate the downtown campus alone -- is a person, an event, a beginning or an end, or, simply, the story of a tree.

The stump of the Founder's Elm, encased in cement. Top: The fan-shaped leaf of a ginkgo tree. PHOTO: Owen Egan

Take the Founder's Elm, once a towering marvel, now just a stump, its massive circumference encased for posterity in cement. Planted in James McGill's day, in approximately 1790, the tree was finally cut down in 1976 -- one of the 40 great elms that characterized the campus for much of the last century and that fell victim to Dutch elm disease three decades ago. A stately row of these elms lined each side of the road running from the Roddick Gates up to the Arts Building, but none survived the deadly fungus. With the felling of the Founder's Elm itself, the University Gardens and Grounds Committee saw fit to make a memorial of the stump. There it sits, in front of the School of Architecture, guarded on one side by a newly planted willow and on the other by a feisty, disease-resistant Siberian elm.

The Man Who Planted Trees

It was Sir William Dawson, McGill principal from 1855 to 1893, who was responsible for much of the early transformation of McGill's downtown grounds from "a ramshackle collection of deteriorating buildings" to the elegant urban oasis of a campus that we recognize today, according to biographer Susan Sheets-Pyenson. When Dawson, a paleobotanist and professor of natural science, arrived at the University from Nova Scotia, he wrote that he found the grounds "unfenced, and pastured at will by herds of cattle, which not only cropped the grass, but browsed on the shrubs, leaving unhurt only one great elm, which still stands as 'the founder's tree.'"

	A ginkgo tree in front of Chancellor Day Hall PHOTO: Nicolas Morin

Having a mandate to transform McGill from a "tiny, poverty-stricken provincial school," as he first described it, into a full-fledged university, Dawson knew he had to attract students and impress the citizenry, and having a beautiful campus was a strong card to play.

"[He] decided to lay out gardens and plant trees at his own expense," writes Sheets-Pyenson. "He was seen on more than one occasion 'with muddy boots and turned up trousers' measuring out and tracing the form for garden beds," and planted an exotic variety of trees, some imported from his hometown of Pictou, N.S.

It was Dawson who oversaw the division of the east and west sides of the lower campus and the planting of trees, largely on the east section and in the hollows beside the Redpath Museum and in front of the Macdonald Engineering Building. A few of the trees that were planted during his era remain today, such as the old sugar maple on the lower campus. And the surviving catalpas are the offspring of Dawson's original catalpa that stood beside the Redpath, planted from the original's rattling seed pods.

The Cursed Ginkgo Tree

Throughout McGill history, others have left their own arboreal imprint on the campus. The old ginkgo that towered in front of the Arts Building was planted near the turn of the century by botany professor David Penhallow, just in front of the Founder's Tomb. While the tree with the unusual, fan-shaped, finely pleated leaves thrived for many years -- the first of its kind on campus when Penhallow brought it as a sapling from Japan -- it eventually got too big for its britches, at least for Stanley Frost, LLD'90. A former dean of divinity, vice-principal (academic) and now director of the McGill History Project, Frost recounts how in the 1960s he began to detest the tree.

The ginkgo tree that once obscured founder James McGill's tomb in front of the Arts Building. PHOTO: McGill Archives

"It obscured the tomb. I cursed the tree, wonderful relic that it may be, for it was despoiling our place. Marvellously, it withered and died. My friends didn't realize my curse was so powerful."

For anyone desiring to see an old, old ginkgo, deep ridges carved into its massive grey trunk, there is one on the grounds of Chancellor Day Hall, most likely planted during or prior to the construction of the James Ross House in the 1890s, the building's previous incarnation until the Faculty of Law moved in following McGill's purchase of the mansion in 1948. The tree, marked by its unusual form and brilliant yellow leaves in the fall, was fashionable in the Victorian period, as were many things Japanese, recounts Martin Lechowicz, a McGill professor of biology who specializes in tree ecology.

Lechowicz, who is on the Gardens and Grounds Committee, has a penchant for oriental species. Many of the species, such as the ginkgo and magnolia, do well here, he explains, because before the last ice age, they were native to North America.