Dear editor:

We read the article about town council’s discussion regarding our present tree bylaws (“Restrictions on tree cuttings are unfair, councillors say”) in the Feb. 22 edition of The Lake Report.

Oh, dear. We really are in trouble when councillors are unfamiliar with the town’s tree bylaws. 

Planting a replacement tree for the one cut down seems to be a foreign concept to some members of town council.

Just as bewildering is council agreeing to give permission to cut down a healthy tree, as detailed in the same story.

It is simply mind-boggling.

If we read the tree bylaw correctly, even with permission to remove a tree on private property, depending on the circumference at a given height of the tree to be cut down, a property owner in the urban area of NOTL is automatically required to plant a minimum of two replacement trees.

Yet Coun. Erwin Wiens stated that “we don’t have a tree policy in the town to plant more trees,” even though there clearly is such a bylaw.

Perhaps the bylaw department should offer a brush-up workshop to the councillors who are unaware of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s tree bylaw?

In the Niagara Region, we used to grow tender fruits: peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, cherries and more.

The whole peninsula was a sea of fruit trees and we did feed a lot of people with good, healthy fruit.

Now we are “wine country.”

Farmers make a lot more money by growing grapes and the government receives substantially more revenues from wine than from fruit. 

We enjoy a good glass of wine as well as the next person.

Is Councillor Wiens hoping that if we drink enough of the good stuff, we might all ignore reason and eat whatever he is trying to feed us?  

Margret Walker
and Mary Kilmer
NOTL