Ernest Hemingway on Toronto’s Oak trees circa 1923
The Star today certainly had a variety of stories to occupy me this morning. Much of what is being reported is sobering, but one piece the Star ran was quite an interesting re-print. I did not know that Ernest Hemingway had lived in Toronto or worked for the Star for a number of years before his first book was published. A couple of days ago an oak tree fell on a playground in High Park and slightly injured a mother and her son. It was this incident that prompted the Star to re-publish one of Hemingway’s articles about the health of High Park’s oaks, so long ago, in today’s paper.
The picture below comes from www.insidetoronto.ca as part of their article on the tree falling.
The Star has a video of a massive tree falling in the Beaches in a number of backyards.
When Hemingway was writing for the Star, under the pseudonym Peter Jackson, he wrote a beautiful piece about the impacts of urbanization and increased pollution caused by city living, and in particular “motor cars”. It is not very long, reads as you might expect it would and paints a very familiar picture of the struggle to balance nature and progress. All roads in Toronto have been paved since 1923, and in that time science has also progressed enough to tell us that it is not just oily dust being kicked into the air we need to worry about. Nonetheless, I found it fascinating that there is an article from 1923 concerned about the health of Toronto’s trees and open space, worried about urban growth enchroaching on natural environments and the impact of fossil fuel burning vehicles on the environment around them. Hemingway having a Toronto connection is pretty cool too.
Tags: Environment, Hemingway, High Park, Oak Trees
June 1st, 2009 at 9:57 pm
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July 25th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
[...] Last year I also wrote about another Oak Tree that had fallen on a playground in High Park and of Ernest Hemmingway’s concern in 1923 about the impacts of urbanization on the City of Toronto’s oak trees. July 31st 2008 Ernest Hemingway on Toronto’s Oak trees circa 1923 [...]
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