Programs

Meet More LBNA Summer Interns!

Whether or not you choose to participate in our Neighbourwoods Tree Inventory, you’ll probably see these summer interns in their green T-shirts.

Meet Nicole Bitter

I am very excited to be back working for the Long Branch Neighbourhood Association and taking part in the LBNA tree programs. Last year our team visited many of the properties in Long Branch and I had the pleasure of meeting the residents and getting to know the area.

I live on the west end of Long Branch where my grandparents bought a condo in the 70s and I remember many visits to Marie Curtis Park and taking the GO train downtown.

I am a graduate student from Fleming College and the University of Guelph where I took Environmental Science programs and developed my love for nature and trees.

I really enjoyed my summer last year learning about urban trees and the importance of preserving forest ecosystems in city areas. I love working outside and also within small communities to try and spread awareness and understanding for the living world.

From my many years at school, I have studied the relationship between humans and nature and why it is so important to maintain a healthy balance in any landscape. Growing up in the GTA, I have a keen interest in helping the urban environment achieve a more symbiotic relationship with nature than it has in the past. I believe that by following and applying what we know of ecology and biology we can grow to become a more sustainable community and world.

Meet Lucas Udvarnoky

A photo of one of our summer interns, Lucas Udvarnoky

I’m a jazz music student at the University of Toronto, entering my 4th year. I started playing guitar when I was 8 years old, and I play the trumpet at U of T. I enjoy listening to and playing all kinds of music!

I’ve lived in Long Branch since 1999 and this is my second year on the Long Branch tree inventory team.

I have a love for nature (especially trees) and am excited to be working around trees again this summer. I’m eager to see all of the beautiful and interesting species that are planted, as well as the old and wise. I’ve always been an avid tree watcher and am always on the lookout for noteworthy trees!

I care a lot about the environment and am happy to be a part of an effort to help our urban forest. It is awesome to both live and work in Long Branch!

Meet Savannah Bein

I am a fourth year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, majoring in environmental studies with minors in French and German. Because I have lived my whole life in Long Branch, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with nature in my own neighbourhood.

During my undergrad, we studied the sustainable development goals. Particularly, the goal of “building sustainable cities” caught my interest, which I focused my research in. I am really interested in the combination of dense urban cities meeting the balance of nature. I look forward to preserving the green canopy and preserving the character of Long Branch as the neighbourhood continues to grow.

Meet Evan Udvarnoky

I am a passionate science student studying biology at the University of Waterloo and I am excited to begin my second year of studying in September.

I have been a resident of Long Branch my whole life and have enjoyed all 19 years of living in this beautiful neighbourhood. I enjoy the outdoors and my hobbies include mountain biking, kayaking, hiking, and camping.

This position interests me as I will get to spend my summer outdoors and in my neighbourhood. As a biology student, I’m also looking forward to expanding my knowledge of trees and the ecosystems around me. I’m ready to apply my learning from school.

LBNA Launches New Tree Stewardship Programs!

The Long Branch Neighbourhood Association has been very active in programs to preserve and re-build the tree canopy in Long Branch.

These programs have included Tree for Me – distribution of free native Canadian trees for residents to plant at home. Another is Long Branch Remembers – again distributing native species to commemorate veterans connected to Long Branch.

Our latest program is structured around Tree Stewardship.

What better way to celebrate Canada Day than a guided walk to learn about trees (physical distancing requirements will all be met so the walk is enjoyable and safe for all) or an on-line workshop to learn how to care for your young trees so they grow to become gentle giants (or healthy mid-size trees).

Registration is now open for the first programs in our new series. It is free thanks to a grant to the Long Branch Neighbourhood Association (LBNA) from the City of Toronto.

What is that Tree?

Discover Long Branch and Nature

Join us on this exciting 1.5 hour walk to learn how to identify and talk about trees by looking at leaf anatomy and other distinguishing features!

Two Sessions: Friday, July 3, 2020 at either 9:00 am or 11:30am
Starts and ends in Sam Smith Park

Led by Jonathan Dionne, Long Branch Tree Stewardship Program Lead and University of Toronto Masters in Forest Conservation Candidate.

Meet Jonathan Dionne

Born and raised in rural Nova Scotia, Jonathan grew up outside, hiking, biking, and relaxing at the lake. After completing his undergraduate degree at Dalhousie University with a major in biology and a minor in statistics, Jon made the move to the big city of Toronto, surrounding himself by what he loves, nature!

Currently doing his masters in forest conservation at the University of Toronto, Jonathan is spending the summer working on a community engagement and urban tree stewardship project within the community of Long Branch.

While Jon is excited about developing professional skills in the field, and to share his knowledge and enthusiasm for biodiversity and forest management, he is especially looking forward to: getting to know the community and its members, and to help create a healthy, relaxing, and sustainable urban environment for everyone to enjoy!

The Black Barn Maple of Eastwood.

If trees could talk (*experimental scientific data indicates that they do) our Black Barn Maple, located at the rear of 95 James Street, has witnessed the many trials and tribulations that only a local farm tree could.

When it was a natural sapling in the 1860s, James and Martha Eastwood purchased 200 ha (500 acres) of the Samuel Smith Tract running south of Lake Shore King’s Highway from Etobicoke Creek to about Thirty-First Street.

Included in the sale and just a few hundred meters north of the Black Barn Maple, stood the Colonel Samuel Smith Cabin. The property was vacated when Colonel Sam Smith died in 1826.

An aerial photograph of western Long Branch showing the Eastwood homestead and its Black Barn — Aerial view (Nov., 1949) looking east along Lake Shore Blvd West from near Long Branch Loop, Ontario Archives Acc 16215, ES1-814, Northway Gestalt Collection. The photo shows the Colonel Samuel Smith house at Forty First St. and Lake Shore Blvd. West, originally a log cabin built in 1797, to which extensions and siding were added over the years.

In 1833, the John Skirving Family arrived from Scotland and moved into the empty Colonel Smith Cabin. Only a year later, John Skirving succumbed to malaria. Sadly, the widowed Mrs. Skirving, her six daughters and one son were forced to abandon the cabin in 1834.

The last person to live in the Colonel Samuel Smith Cabin was the Eastwood’s grandson, Robert Christopherson, who was born there in 1880. Christopherson sold it to one of E. P. Taylor’s companies for a Dominion Store site in 1952.

With resources, vision and good ole Canadian pioneer tenacity, James Eastwood resurrected the Colonel Sam Smith Sawmill and forested the rich arboreal land of Oak, Maple and Ash.

The next phase was to seed the newly cleared land and husband an ambitious livestock of horses, chickens, pigs and cattle. The farm was later assumed by James’ son, Robert Eastwood. The Eastwood Park Hotel, was his former farmstead became famous for his Shorthorn Cattle receiving Gold medals at the Royal Winter Fair.

To adequately shelter the Eastwood Farms livestock, three barns were raised. The last and the largest, became a welcoming land mark from the Hamilton Highway. It was the Eastwood Black Barn which stood prominently for decades and well up to the early 1960s.

At that time our beloved Black Barn Silver Maple which was just growing south of the Long Branch Black Barn icon, was already 100 years old!

Photograph of the Black Barn Maple tree, located in behind 95 James Street — Photo 2 – View of The Black Barn Maple of Eastwood from 93 James Street. Estimated to be well over 100 years old, this beauty is healthy, vibrant, and full of wildlife. The view of this tree can be enjoyed from James, Forty First, Fortieth and Garden Place.

During the building boom of the 1920s, Eastwood started to sell off his lands for residential development but continued to raise his prized cattle for years later. Luckily, or maybe by fortuitous foresight, our Black Barn Maple was not felled for development but was allowed to mature to be one of Long Branch’s oldest remaining potential Heritage Trees.

With ‘intelligent planning’, the Black Barn Maple can safely remain a beacon of arboreal stewardship for years to come.

Bill Zufelt is a Director of the Long Branch Neighbourhood Association and
Chairs the Association’s History and Culture Committee

This article was originally published in The Etobicoke Lakeshore Press © Bill Wallace Zufelt 2019

Long Branch – Toronto’s First Health Resort

Are you feeling a bit lethargic or anxious lately? I may have a remedy for you and the answer is literally at your feet.

But first a bit of ‘healthy-history’.

In the 1850s, acclaimed author and naturalist Henry D. Thoreau’s asserted his classic prescription of ‘Tonic of Wilderness’ for civilization and its discontents.

His essay Walden Pond; Life in the Woods, published in 1854, prompted a worldwide movement of ‘the natural forest benefits’ for good health and wellbeing.

Founding of the Long Branch Resort

Thirty years later, in 1883, Thomas John Wilkie, secretary of the Toronto Y.M.C.A., purchased the lush, densely forested acreage adjacent to Lake Ontario from James Eastwood for the Long Branch Resort and YMCA Boys camp in southern Etobicoke.

I am not sure if Wilkie was familiar with Thoreau’s writings but the paralleled logic destined Long Branch Park to become a mini mecca of promoting healthy ‘body, mind and spirit’.

Historic Long Branch Hotel — Photo 1 – Lithographic Print of the Long Branch Hotel complete with stunning forest views.

Architecturally modeled on structures in Long Branch, New Jersey, there was the stunning Japanese Pagoda Hotel, fountain square, private Queen Anne and Jacobean villa rentals, a gymnasium, squash and tennis courts, a dancing and picnic Pavilion, lawn bowling and cricket, swimming, strolling in the woods, and even a Coney Island carousel and a water flume for the children.

‘Toronto’s Favourite Resort’ as it was advertised had all the amenities to encourage physical activity, proper diet (no alcohol) social engagement and relaxation.

But there was more.

The most abundant natural and free health asset that Long Branch Park boasted was the surrounding eco-therapeutic forest of majestic Oaks, Ash, Black Walnut, Maple, Pine and Spruce trees.

Early Development of Long Branch

In the 1910’s, Colonel Fredrick Burton Robins, a real-estate developer, embraced too, the tree rich lands of Long Branch and capitalized on it to promote the health benefits of ‘Pine Beach’ and ‘The Pines’ residential 50-foot lots.

“A Healthy Home is a Happy Home” – Colonel F.B. Robins.

The Health Benefits of Long Branch

Today there is a plethora of scientific evidence that ‘forest bathing’ as the Japanese have coined it, is proven to lower heart rate and blood pressure, reduce stress hormone production, boost the immune system, and improve overall feelings of wellbeing.

In the last eight years Japanese officials spent about $4 million dollars studying the physiological and psychological effects of forests and trees. Based on 48 therapy forest trails the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo measured the activity of human natural killer (NK) cells in the immune system before and after exposure to the woods. These cells provide rapid response to viral-infected cells and respond to tumor formation and are associated with improving the immune system and cancer prevention.

At the end of the study the trial participants had significant increases in NK cell activity and production.

Trees emit various essential oils in aerosol form. Generally called ‘phytoncide’, these oils protect the trees from germs and insects.

Not surprisingly, when visitors to the Long Branch Park strolled about or went exploring in the adjacent woods their inhaling of the phytoncide just didn’t make them feel fresher and better —it improved their overall immune system too.

Specific trees give off different types of eco-therapeutic aerosols and with corresponding health benefits. The familiar fragrance of Long Branch Park in the 1890s was bathed with the essence of pine and spruce. (like a Christmas Tree)

In Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s (internationally celebrated Ontario Botanist) book The Global Forest she high-lights about the Pinus species scent properties.

“The worldwide use of Pine scents, oils and extracts in Health Spas is fortified with scientific healthy benefits. For instance, on a sweltering summer day the pine tree will emit an odour that is detected at ground level. This scent is a medicinal mixture of various esters of pinosylvin. In other words, the pinosylvin acts as a natural antibiotic, helps the process of breathing (hence the feeling of fresh air) and is a mild narcotic. These natural pine aerosols have an anesthetic effect on the body, bringing on relaxation and peace of mind.”, wrote Beresford- Kroeger.

In another study conducted by Japan’s Chiba University, 280 subjects were measured for blood pressure heart rate and salivary cortisol (which increases with stress) before and after a 30-minute forest visit.

Long Branch Resort — Photo 2- In the Woods – A lithographic print from the pages of “Long Branch Toronto’s Favourite Summer Resort”

“Forest environments promote lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity than tree barren city environments” the study concluded.

Subjects were less ‘hyped’, their rest-and –digestive systems were more efficient, sympathetic nerve systems calmed, and they felt more rested and less inclined to stress after a walk in the woods.

It is no wonder that Thomas J. Wilkie, Colonel F.B. Robins made significant real estate investments in a Southern Etobicoke utopia.

To their credit, all the health-seeking patrons that visited Long Branch Park by the steamer-ship loads and later bought land is how Long Branch Village was established.

Compared to the coal soot, sanitary-compromised streets of Toronto, the pine tree air sweep, cleansing, natural eco-aromatherapy of the air canopy was simply irresistible.

No guess now, as to what my recommendation is. Treat yourself to a 30-minute walk (forest bath) in the greenest tree rich area you can find.

Happy Forest Bathing!

Bill Zufelt is a Director of the Long Branch Neighbourhood Association and
Chairs the Association’s History and Culture Committee

P.S. Even in winter the trees still do their magic but at a slower rate and besides the 30-minute walk is time well invested in your health and wellbeing.