As mentioned, I walk a lot. A ridiculous amount, actually.

After Sunnybrook Hospital teamed up with Home Deport to put 16 screws into my leg (to hold three plates), walking ensures I can keep, well, walking.

And this brings us to the massacre on Mississagua.

On one jaunt this week, I decided to count trees. There are 70 significant ones lining the two sides of that main thoroughfare between the stone wall at Queen and the Timmies at Mary. Some are massive, ancient.

Together they form an awesome canopied and rustic entrance to the heart of this place — the golf course, the chi-chi shops and 47 gelato hangouts.

But soon, 70 will become 29. The folks we elected have greenlit plans to slaughter 41 of those trees, chop away the green above and turn Mississagua Street into something Mississauga would be proud of.

In case you missed it, NOTL is funding ($3 million) a reconstruction of the main entry road to Old Town. It was approved a couple of years ago and is now set to start. Like pronto.

There was a public here-it-is session on the last day of March, the one and only time residents were told what’s coming and have their comments noted. By that time, of course, all the engineering had been done, the drawings finished and the fate sealed.

When completed, the road will be significantly wider. Bicycle lanes on both sides. A bike-car buffer space added. A new sidewalk. Fresh pipes installed underneath. Communications wires buried. New faux-heritage streetlamps erected. Ditches and swales dug. All amid the sawdust of dozens of stately trees.

It seems there’s no opposition to this. The mayor says: “This project represents an important investment in maintaining and improving our community infrastructure. By upgrading underground services and enhancing the streetscape, we are supporting long-term reliability while also improving the experience for residents, pedestrians, and cyclists.”

Big boosters of the plan seem to be the folks around the intersection at Mary who rent e-bikes and electric scooters to kamikaze tourists who, until now, have wobbled and careened into traffic headed for snacks and booze. No wonder.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. He’s writing about repaving now? How far down the rabbit hole has Garth gone?

But there’s more to this.

Over the coming months, the Niagara Region will be ripping up Niagara Stone Road. The town will be shutting down Mississagua. That means the conga line of dump trucks going to the Big Dig at the Royal George will be diverting though Old Town residential streets.

The main drag, Queen Street, will be the scene of immense destruction as Shaw turns heritage buildings into rubble. And towering over the area is, yes, a tower — that massive crane at the Parliament Oak site, where a very, very big hotel is being plunked into a quiet hood of signature houses.

Meanwhile, the downtown folks trying to make a living from the tourists are waiting for politicians to inform them if they can have a patio or not. Merchants have been harassed by bylaw officers telling them how much window space can be devoted to signage. And now uncoordinated, uncaring political decisions promise to make this a summer of dust and noise.

Why do people flock here to visit? To live in this bucolic burg?

For the quiet, the history, the architecture, the streetscapes, the geography — and the green above us. These are the intangibles making life in this place unique inside a world of chaotic change, conflict and AI slop.

Sure, we can live with 41 fewer trees. But not quite the same.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca