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After bearing mute witness to crowds heading to every Calgary Stampede, an iconic American elm was brought down Monday morning to make way for the incoming event centre.
A crew contracted by the city employing a crane and chainsaws chopped down the tree that had stood for 125 years, its final shade being cast across part of a Stampede parking lot just to the north of the Scotiabank Saddledome.
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In a photo taken by a Victoria Park resident, logs cut from the tree were piled a few metres from the elm’s remaining trunk while a wood chipper was in operation close by.
Its removal is one of the first harbingers of the coming construction of the $900-million event centre, and part of the site preparation before ground is broken for the project sometime this year.
Often referred to as the Stampede Elm, the iconic tree is believed to have been planted in early 1900, originally at the intersection of four backyards.
While it wasn’t the oldest elm in Calgary, it was the largest, say city officials, who considered it too badly damaged to survive a move.
Despite the effects of development since then, the tree has stood in Victoria Park near the Stampede grounds throughout its 100-plus-year life.
Scott Hickerty, who’s lived nearby for the past 15 years, said it’s sad to see the elm succumb, though he welcomes the coming of the event centre.
“When I saw the crews arrive I thought, ‘maybe they’ll just trim the branches,’ ” he said.
“We used to climb up into the tree and take family photos, but five or six years ago (authorities) put up a sign there saying ‘don’t climb, we’re trying to protect it,’ which seems ironic now.”
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The city has said it intends to “honour its legacy” through various preservation efforts, including a partnership with the University of Calgary in 2021 to create a digital three-dimensional rendition, which was captured by scanning the tree from 12 locations using a terrestrial laser.
That image is now part of the U of C’s Alberta Digital Heritage Archive.
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A local tree nursery will also accept 150 seeds from the elm, and branches have been cut from it with hopes they’ll be cloned to contribute to the city’s urban forest as identical descendants of their parent.
Notions of how to repurpose wood from the tree have been put forward, including one from the Calgary Woodturners Guild, which has proposed non-profit groups throughout the city be provided with pieces to fashion into art that could be put on display at the Stampede.
Guild program director Terry Golbeck said he received an email from a city official expressing interest in having wood art incorporated into the event centre to immortalize the tree.
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“It might have been a precedent for sentimental trees and that could all be brought together to be documented,” said Golbeck.
“It could raise awareness of the urban forest and the value of it.”
But Golbeck said he had never heard anything further from the city and that the elm’s destruction took him by surprise.
It’s not the only historical asset in the immediate area making way for the long-awaited event centre that will replace the Saddledome.
The 113-year-old Stephenson and Co. Grocers building at the corner of 13th Avenue and 5th Street S.E. will be dismantled and relocated this spring, the city said last month.
Plans to preserve the two-storey brick building and “integrate it back into Calgary’s modern-day urban landscape” are being explored, the city said.
How that will be done is still undetermined, but the city said options could include repurposing the building into a storefront, cultural or community-centric facility.
Until then, it’ll be safeguarded at an undisclosed location.
— With files from Scott Strasser
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