Giving new life to dead trees

Carving tree trunks into artworks

With the help of well-known carvers, a group of students and parents from Eardley Elementary School in Aylmer are planning to turn dying century-old trees on school grounds into artworks.

“Our project will save a bit of this heritage with a plan to shape the tree trunks into artistic representations based on cultural and educational themes: wolves (the school’s mascot), influential figures, totems representing the community, and others,” explained Melissa Smith, a member of the Eardley Trees Project team.

“We want to keep and maintain the history of the yard, and make it something spectacular. ” The public carving, she said, is scheduled for early July.

“It will be the only place in Canada with 40 tree sculptures in a school yard open to the public,” added Smith. The team is seeking funding from the three level of governments to pay the carvers. This carving is actually an ancient Celtic practice, common in pre-Roman France, and many homes and yards in Aylmer already have such sculptures.

Before becoming a school yard, the area north of the monastery was used by Aylmer’s self-sufficient Redemptorist Brothers. They played an important role in Aylmer, and were active members of the community.

In 1940, the religious order erected an arch at the boundary between Aylmer and Lucerne, near the present-day IGA on Aylmer Road, to commemorate the 1940 Eucharistic Congress.

Acting as Aylmer’s gateway for many years, the arch was demolished roughly two decades after it was built. The monastery almost had the same fate, after the Brothers vacated the premises in 1968. In the 1970s when the monastery was used as a community service centre, several proposals planned its demolition, but because of resident opposition, Aylmer preserved it. The religious order sold the property in 1998 and it now houses an old folks’ home after its expansion.