Richmond Hill residents 'heartbroken' over loss of trees in established neighbourhoods

Big yards, neighbourhood woodlots facing pressure from development

Yorkregion.com
March 10, 2023
Kim Zarzour

There are times when Deb Thompson walks through her Oak Ridges neighbourhood, when soft winds make the towering pines hum, and her heart fills with joy.

There are other times when she feels a gaping hole overhead -- and in her heart.

That’s when she walks past developers’ bulldozer scars, where gaping sky replaces the canopy of swaying boughs, where the trees are silent because the trees are gone.

Thompson lives in a community in north Richmond Hill that has long revolved around the woods. Residents, drawn to soaring trees, moved here and signed covenants to protect them.

Now they are watching the greenery clear-cut and disappear.

Many say it’s an example of what’s happening across the region. They are concerned the canopy loss harms the environment and their physical and mental health.

Others say it’s an unavoidable cost of growth and may even be good for the environment.

For the last few years, longtime residents watched the large, single-home lots south of Bloomington sell to investors, older, smaller homes demolished to make way for larger ones, or subdivided to hold several multi-million-dollar houses, and their beloved trees chopped, chipped and carted away.

“I can understand trees needing to be removed because they are diseased or very old and a danger to the public, but it’s plain in some areas the land is purchased and an immediate application put though to build," resident Howard Doughty said. "Trees are taken down to make room. There’s no justification for this because these aren’t going to be affordable homes and there’s ample land already scheduled for development.”

Neighbour Nancy Stephens is "heartbroken".

“What about existing homeowners' rights?" she asked. "It’s always about the developers’ rights. Why should they get to come here and strip the trees and cram homes in? There are thousands of acres in Ontario that don’t have a tree on it. Why buy in an established, mature forested neighbourhood?”

“The only explanation I can think of is developers make more money on bigger homes,” Suzanne Payne said. She wonders if it’s a symptom of changing times: fewer people engaged in local communities, treating property purchases as investment.

Neighbourhood barbecues are gone; so, too are small homes once hidden behind trees, the deforested lots now function as construction yards storing backhoes, skids, rocks and equipment, once-quiet roads filled with contractors, trucks and dust.

And in some cases, neighbours believe the trees are being cut illegally.

This was the case last month when they demanded the city put a stop-work order on tree-clearing at 52 Beaufort Hills Rd.

City spokesperson Lynn Chan did not say whether the landowner was fined, but said staff is working to “rectify any infractions to the tree preservation bylaw.”

When a developer seeks to build on sites with existing trees, Chan said, the city requires they prepare an arborist report and tree inventory and protection plan.

The city determines which trees must be protected based on species, size, condition, location and function within the ecological system.

Site visits, aerial mapping and streetview imagery help staff determine whether trees have been illegally removed. Transgressors are liable to fines starting at $300 up to and exceeding $100,000.

“Nobody, including myself, wants to see trees disappear,” Oak Ridges Coun. Carol Davidson said.

“I get a lot of calls about this. It's not just here; it could be any neighbourhood in the GTA."

Davidson says Google street views show dramatic decimation -- along King Road, for example, where green landscapes in 2021 were replaced with barren moonscapes one year later.

“People want the green space, people want protection against hot summers and we want places for the animals to go.”

Yet, with provincial rules now allowing up to three units per lot, Davidson worries that “backyards will be stripped everywhere.”

Richmond Hill Mayor David West agreed tree-cutting can feel devastating.

“It changes the look of a neighbourhood; people get really upset ... I don't want to diminish that, but it’s a balancing act,” he added. “We can say no to an application, but if that’s the only reason, we would get slaughtered at the Ontario Land Tribunal."

Phil Pothen sees it differently.

“These low-density neighbourhoods are Ontario’s biggest environmental problem,” the Ontario environment program manager for Environmental Defence, an environmental advocacy group, said. “They build in C02 emissions, they push sprawl into actual wildlife habitat, and we desperately need more homes.”

While trees should not be removed to expand existing single-family homes -- this squanders trees and construction labour and materials desperately need to build more homes -- Pothen said trees should never stand in the way of denser development that keeps protected Greenbelt land from being eroded.

“Every home that gets added to an existing neighbourhood is a win for the environment,” he said. “It is saving trees and farmland in places that are much more environmentally sensitive ... one less piece of natural heritage that doesn’t get lost.”

Residents fighting back in Beaufort Hills say neighbourhoods blessed with older trees are worthy of protection. They suggest ways to encourage preservation: education helping homeowners understand why and how to keep their trees healthy, infill relegated to areas with transit and jobs, requirements for builders to plan around existing trees, limits on percentage of trees that may be removed, and requirements that builders replace lost trees with new ones in nearby parks or boulevards.

“This is the biggest investment in our life,” Alana Kanaka said. “Many of us bought because of the beauty of the area ... This isn’t helping with housing. It’s destroying a beautiful community for profit.”