Globe and Mail writer Kat Sieniuc writes about the plan by City Council to maintain Toronto’s so-called “urban canopy.” There’s an odd bit of fretting in this article about what an “impossible task” the City has set itself. It may be a big job that takes a while but one has to conclude on the most obvious evidence from here and around the world that Toronto has at least got this aspect of its civic planning right. The Israelis re-made the environment of their little country in 40 or 50 years by planting trees. It had been stripped naked, like much of the middle east, by several centuries of Ottoman mismanagement. Trees were cut for firewood and to feed the steam engines. The Chinese get it. They are planting an enormous forest outside Beijing to help stop the sandstorms that afflict their capital and improve the air. Globe and Mail
