Tag: trees

Categories
Arts

Canopy: A community project foreseeing a greener society

Courtesy of Madeline Schmidt

Concordia’s Greenhouse hosts a project inspired by a utopian concept, to be presented April 22

After making your way up to the 13th floor of the Hall Building and passing through an inviting doorway, you might suddenly notice the smell of fresh soil as hoses on a “mist” setting crowd your sinuses. An overwhelming presence of life makes itself known; a sort of hidden life, perhaps. 

You’ve stumbled upon Canopy; The Hidden Life of Humans: a project that unites science with arts and crafts in pursuit of the idea that we, as humans, may one day be able to move civilization above the ground into canopies. 

Courtesy of Madeline Schmidt

Maddy Schmidt, who recently graduated from Concordia with a major in design, conceived the idea in August of last year while walking through Montreal and spotting a planter erupting with vines and other vegetation. 

At the same time, Schmidt was listening to a Radiolab podcast about copepods: small crustaceans found in various aquatic habitats, and even in above-ground ecosystems among trees. In their episode Forests On Forests, Radiolab states that about 50 per cent of all terrestrial beings live in trees.

“I saw this crazy web of vines, and they were all linking onto each other. It looks like they’re holding each other. I saw them linking onto the fence,” said Schmidt. “I saw them linking onto other plants. And I was like, there’s this completely interconnected world, it was so mind-blowing.”

The Canopy co-creator immediately called her longtime friend, first-year photography major Liliane Junod, out of inspiration. The “partners in vine” brainstormed ideas for a project honouring the concept of humans living from the top down, rather than the ground up.

Courtesy of Lilly Junod

The idea of the project is to hang all sorts of house plants, such as pothos, also known as devil’s ivy, around the Hall Building’s greenhouse. They would be linked together with grapevines and hung on trellising made from recycled materials. 

The Canopy team is gathering material from Facebook groups that are designated for sharing recycled materials, such as Creative Re-use: Ø Waste, or CRØW.

Canopy will be hosting a workshop in collaboration with Concordia Precious Plastic Project (CP3) and Concordia University’s Centre for Creative Reuse (CUCCR), on April 4 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.. Anyone is welcome to attend. 

CP3’s portion of the workshop will entail drawing lantern designs and learning how to transform them into illustrator outlines, which will then be cut into recycled plastic sheets with laser-cutters. 

The second part of the workshop, led by CUCCR, will focus on making arts and crafts with recycled materials, and techniques such as sculpting, drawing, painting, and printing will be taught by Concordia’s fine arts students.

“The end result of this project is going to be an exhibition where we create this magical canopy space in the greenhouse, and we’re going to include our artists from the community,” said Junod. “We’re excited to have not just people in fine arts, for whom art is their entire life, but also anybody. So we want to put forth the message that everyone can create for this.”

Courtesy of Lilly Junod

One of the Canopy team’s keywords is optimism, and their goal is to keep the community lighthearted when thinking about the environment.

“We really want this project to be as uplifting as possible,” says Schmidt. “Of course, we’re addressing tons of systemic issues, methodologies, but we’re exposing them through something much more artistic and colourful.”

The Canopy team is calling on any students from the Fine Arts, Arts and Science and JMSB faculties who are willing to lend a hand between now and the day of exhibit on April 22. 

You can visit the project’s Linktree @canopythloh for more information.

Categories
News

Simply Scientific: Planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide

Half a million flocked to the streets of Montreal for the Climate Strike last Friday. A Swedish girl with braids led the crowd alongside Indigenous representatives. Pickets yelled that now is more of a time than ever to redefine tree huggers as regular citizens. Signs, such as “stop deforestation,” bobbed among the sea of people. However, what is it about deforestation that hurts the planet? How does planting trees exactly combat global warming?

The answer is intrinsically tied with the atmosphere, fossil fuels, and something called fixation.

Fixation is not about being excited to see that cute boy Sebastian from class on the shuttle again. It doesn’t reference picking at chipped nail polish or studying profusely. Fixation, for our purposes, refers to the process of converting something in a gaseous state to an organic solid one. Such deposition plays a major role in the growth of plants.

For trees, fixation starts around tiny windows on their leaves called stomata. Carbon dioxide passes through them like little Ellis Islands. From those portals, the gas assimilates into being an integral part of nature’s skyscrapers; used to synthesize sugars crucial to making bark, roots, et cetera. Without carbon dioxide, timberlands would have nothing to be made out of.

When plants evolved into existence, they diversified and spread across the habitable Earth. Vast forests expanded and soaked up tons of carbon dioxide from a prehistoric atmosphere. For millions of years, greenery all over the globe fixated tons of the gas into stalk, leaves, and whatever other arborous body parts that can cross the mind.

As geological eras progressed and different woods died, a lot of their remains became trapped underground. Hidden away by dirt and the ages, the forests of the past (along with some animals) would be pressurized and decomposed into fossil fuel. The same shrub a dinosaur might have eaten also feeds your uncle’s car!

In the period that H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, the Industrial Revolution created its own chronological loophole. Humanity began burning natural oil and gas to spark the modern age we live in. As payment for all the progression, the planet has been forced to deal with almost two centuries of greenhouse gases transported from eons ago.

Gaseous carbon dioxide can take hundreds of years to leave our skies. Planting trees is a way to fix the substance into an organic form that won’t absorb the sun’s heat. A garden you like to read in is not only a sanctuary for the brain, but a way to maintain icecaps, safe sea levels, and weather patterns. Every nonelectric car and lawnmower helps pollute our ecosphere with chemicals from before our ancestors had fingers.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

Categories
Student Life

A guide to the sacred traditions of Montréal’s trees

Graphic by @spooky_soda.

Unearth the historic roots running throughout the island of Tiohtiá:ke

Scientific historians speculate that it was Aristotle who first decided all living things could be divided into two domains: plants and animals. While biological taxonomy is a touch more complicated these days, the conceptual divide between flora and fauna remains central to western scientific thinking about nature.

But here’s the thing: a key assumption of that conceptual divide is that animals are apperceptive, while plants are not. Plants don’t feel pain, while animals do. Yet, over the past few decades, there have been a number of startling studies—such as one led by Antonio Scialdone at the U.K.’s John Innes Centre, which found that Arabidopsis thaliana were “capable of doing some complex arithmetic to prevent starvation at night.” These findings, as well as others, suggest this divide may not be as clear cut as it seems.

Trees, in particular, are known to have strangely sentient qualities about them. The belief that trees have some kind of innate intelligent life has been with us for millennia, as Cambridge professor Stanley Arthur Cook wrote in the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. So, it is not surprising that trees are cited as having spiritual properties in many sacred traditions.

The Concordian teamed up with the Concordia Multi-faith and Spirituality Centre to create this guide to the sacred traditions associated with the trees found on the island of Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal, unceded Indigenous territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation.

You can use the provided map to find locations where these trees grow, and the leaf graphics to help identify specific species. For each one, we mention which aspect of life it is supposed to help with, from prosperity to fertility. If you’re struggling with something, why not try meditating on it under one of the trees associated with your problem?

1. Rapides du Cheval Blanc Park: Ash tree

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, the Ash tree was very important to the ancient druids of Briton, and had a prominent place in Celtic culture. It was considered the female partner of the Father Tree, the Oak. The Celts valued Ash for its healing and enchantment properties. The Indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes region have also had a long connection to the Ash tree, according to Nicholas J. Reo from Michigan State University. Within these communities, though, it is valued less for it’s spiritual properties and more as a construction resource, particularly for baskets and snowshoes. However, there is a tradition within the Wabanaki Confederacy that maintains that humans were first created from Black Ash trees, according to Native Languages of the Americas, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Indigenous languages of the western hemisphere.

2. Corner of St. Sulpice and Picket Roads: Birch tree

According to Trees for Life, Scotland’s leading conservation volunteering charity, in parts of Europe the Birch tree is linked to fertility, healing magic, new beginnings and purification. This is likely because its seeds can thrive in extremely inhospitable environments, so they’re usually the first trees to grow again on land that has been razed. Through their resiliency, they set up the new ecosystem for the slow-growers like Oak and Beech. In some Ojibwe and Chippewa communities, Birch bark is thought of as a sacred gift, and was sometimes used in ceremonial wrapping of the deceased for burial, according to Dr. Kelly S. Meier, the Senior Director of Institutional Diversity at Minnesota State University. In fact, Birch bark does have medicinal properties for pain relief, and birch leaves can be used for treating arthritis, according to WebMD.

3. Corner of Guy Street and Argyle Avenue: Cedar tree

According to the Indigenous Studies department at the University of British Columbia, in Ojibwe traditions, the Cedar tree is associated with cleansing, protection and prosperity. It is thought of as the most sacred tree among some Indigenous communities. The west coast Indigenous peoples consider the Red Cedar to be the “tree of life” and believe that it plays a key role in nurturing the mind, body and soul. A prayer of respect is recited prior to any part of the tree being harvested. This is because of Cedar’s ubiquitous use in all parts of northwest Indigenous peoples’ lives, including canoes, clothing, cooking utensils, medicines, ceremonial masks and more, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia.

4. Raymond Park: Oak tree

For many Indigenous tribes of east and mid-eastern North America, Oak is a medicine tree, connected with strength and protection, according to Native Languages of the Americas. Individual Oaks are known for their tremendous size and longevity. According to Indigenous tradition, the location of Oak trees often serve as spiritual and civic centres for important gatherings. In Celtic lore, the Oak is regarded as the holiest of holy trees, according to the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. The ancient Greeks and Romans also associated the Oak with their highest gods—Zeus and Jupiter respectively. Even the Norse associated it with Thor, their god of thunder. The Oak tree is the ultimate spiritual symbol of strength and endurance.

5. Wilfrid Laurier Park: Maple tree

Maple syrup was known and valued by Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia, long before the arrival of European settlers. This tree is so central to some Indigenous cultures that the explanation of the origin of maple syrup production figures into their story about when the Creator made earth world itself. In many North American Indigenous legends, maple syrup originally comes out of the maple tree already edible.
However, at some point, an intervening trickster god—whose name differs from community to community—forces people to process the sap if they want the sweet reward. According to Indian Country Wisconsin, in Anishinaabe legend the god’s name is Wenebojo, but in Abenaki legend he’s named Gluskabe. The maple tree is also seen as a tree of tolerance and gentleness in many Indigenous traditions. It is also the preferred source of ‘talking sticks’, a tool used during council meetings to indicate whose turn it is to speak.

The Concordia Multi-faith and Spirituality Centre runs a series of field-trips every school year to various sacred sites. For more information about this year’s outings contact the centre: MFSC@concordia.ca

Feature graphic by @spooky_soda.

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