Brown-John: A Christmas Tree Story

Published Dec 21, 2023 • Last updated 17 hours ago • 3 minute read

A truckload of Christmas trees from Orono, east of Oshawa, is shown arriving in Windsor on Nov. 5, 1956. Clifford Young stands holding a tree in the 4700 block of Howard Avenue, while atop the load is his 23-year-old son Morgan. Mr. Young says the trees will sell from $1.50 to $8.00 each. Photo by Windsor Star archives /Windsor Star

I cannot abandon my passion for real Christmas trees, and each year we decorate our late live tree with hundreds of unique decorations acquired in our round-the-world travels.

My love of real decorated Christmas trees has deep roots.

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Many of my best early years were spent living in a then-rural area of British Columbia. At the time, our home just east of Vancouver was still a place where small farms and cows, pigs and plenty of chickens were common.

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Our house, constructed by my carpenter dad, was located on a relatively main road running between down-the-hill sawmill town Port Moody and more distant major centre New Westminster.

Our house looked across farms to heavily wooded Burnaby Mountain.

My father specialized in cement work like house foundations and retaining walls. Always, it seemed, he worked in the mud. Usually by B.C.’s soggy November he’d be laid off for winter and we then more or less managed on his small unemployment insurance income or cash earnings from odd jobs.

Survival and necessity often impose a need for creative thinking.

An inveterate explorer searching for scrap metals to sell, my father would take our half-ton truck almost anywhere into the bush. He realized the sloping nearby hills were laden with gorgeous fir trees.

And hence it transpired that for several years we ventured into those hills to cut Christmas trees on what was termed ‘Crown land.’ Neither Christmas tree farms nor artificial Yuletide trees had yet been invented.

By early December, we were in the bush from dawn to dark, cutting and hauling trees. Being in the bush in early December in B.C.’s lower mainland assures one of a short day and often plenty of rain.

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My father did all tree selecting and subsequent cutting with his best hand saw. We never owned a chainsaw.

Dad would eye up a tree and decide if it would earn our family $3 to $5. Not worth hauling out of the bush for less. Then he’d fall the trees and I would haul them to assembly points.

As darkness fell, we’d begin hauling trees down the dark mountain slope to our truck.

The mountain slope was littered with windfalls like pick-up sticks and sometimes the remains of burned older trees cast down by bush fires. Over this tangled mass grew huge spear ferns which by winter had died and covered many fallen large trees with a mantle of brown entangled vegetation.

Often I’d rest in the dark, listen to wind and rain and imagine the warmth in so many lighted homes on the flat land below.

I developed paths through entanglements of trees and ferns so that in the dark I could haul four to six trees simultaneously. A path always involved crawling over a fallen log and not infrequently falling into a hidden creek running beneath. Now and then I’d meet my dad who, by dark, also was hauling trees to our truck.

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The small half-ton truck had eight-foot-high wood frame sides so that we could easily accommodate 100+ trees. By early evening, with all trees loaded and tied down — and us punishingly exhausted — we’d head several miles home to mom’s late dinner before off-loading the trees.

In a normal winter over a couple of weeks we’d make three to four tree-cutting trips into the hills.

At home, trees were displayed in our front yard held upright by holes punched in the ground with a heavy crowbar. A hand-painted wooden sign fringed with Christmas lights offered passersby opportunity to purchase a fresh-cut tree. Weekend traffic jams were common.

Until the late 1950s we cut, hauled and sold hundreds of Christmas trees. All cash transactions devoted to keeping our family alive over winter.

Income from trees often constituted a third or more of my dad’s entire annual income.

To this day, the tradition of a fresh cut tree remains a key part of our Christmas. I would not have it any other way and my late parents doubtless would agree.

Lloyd Brown-John is a University of Windsor professor emeritus of political science. He can be reached at lbj@uwindsor.ca.

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