Tony’s Forever Forest
By Mark Cullen President and Co-founder, Trees for Life
T rees for Life has had quite the run since first launching back in 2015, when the very first tree was planted as part of the Highway of Heroes Tree Campaign. In the infancy of Trees for Life, a meeting brought together several not-for-profit organizations dedicated to planting trees in the urban environment. The purpose of the meeting was to answer the question, “What can we do together that we cannot accomplish by working alone?” One of the people at that first meeting was then Landscape Ontario (LO) Executive Director Tony DiGiovanni. After several meetings over the course of a year, Tony
historic Fort York in downtown Toronto in November 2022, with the Right Honourable David Johnston, the former Governor General of Canada. Today, Trees for Life is the “second chapter” of a commitment that Tony as well as our board and staff have made to maximize urban tree planting in Canada. In total we have now raised over $18 million and supported the planting of over 3.3 million trees across Canada, including the Highway of Heroes trees. These achievements would not have been possible without the support that Trees for Life receives from LO and its members. And that support was the direct result of
raised his hand with an idea that would spark a torrent of activity. “Landscape Ontario had been involved in a project that reforested the Veterans Memorial Parkway in London, Ontario,” he said. “Why don’t we do the same and reforest the Highway of Heroes along the 401?” The idea sounded simple enough: after successfully planting trees on the 17 km stretch in London, how difficult could it be to reforest the Highway of Heroes? Suffice it to say there were struggles, but we raised $10 million for the campaign and attracted 4,500 individual Canadian donors and 4,000 volunteer tree planters. We planted our last tree at
20 | LANDSCAPE ONTARIO
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