Sentinel of a century

Tree cutters arrive to bring down the maple on Balsam Street.

About a week ago, a friend up the street visited my next-door neighbour on a mission. With his pickup truck empty, save for his chainsaw and a can of gas, He began a day-long project dissecting the remains of a piece of history. A maple tree that had stood near the street at the corner of Ronnie Egan’s property for nearly a century had dropped too many dead or dying upper limbs to be safe anymore. So the township decided for the benefit of all concerned that the tree should come down.

“I cried the day they took it down,” Ronnie Egan admitted to me. “It was very sad to see it go.”

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