Kittens for Christmas
A scheme to sell unwanted evergreens in Toronto did not go as planned for Kings County man
We’ve been putting up the same kind of sub-standard, Charlie Brown Christmas tree for over 40 years now and this is why.
Way back when, I had it in mind that there might be an alternate market for the scrawnier wild variety of trees that abounded in the woods, ditches and old deserted fields in our area. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was in a province that prided itself on producing the best cultivated and groomed Christmas trees in the world.
I knew that the aromatic fir tree was the universal choice when it came to the iconic symbol of Christmas, but I also knew from my childhood days in Toronto that people there were less discerning in their choice of trees. To most city slickers a tree was a tree was a tree.
TRAIN TO ELMIRA
The idea of tapping into the lucrative Christmas tree market in Upper Canada became a real option for me when I realized that the number of workhorses that I had mustered and was planning to take to the Mennonite community in Elmira, Ont., would not be sufficient to fill the box car that I had booked for the trip. I would be riding the rails with the horses, all their food and my gear, but there would still be ample room for a sizable consignment of tightly wrapped trees.
My mind made up, I swung into gear.
I hitched my old mare,
Lady, to our high-wheeled hay wagon and, with axe and swede saw in hand, I started patrolling the old fields in the Cole Settlement, above Harmony, grabbing every tree that looked suitable. These trees would cost me nothing; we had plenty of them on our own property and our neighbours, although curious as to why I would want them, were eager to get them out of their pastures.
I was able to rent a device to compress and wrap my trees from a legitimate tree grower up in New Ross and it wasn’t long before I had enough trees ready to truck down to Kingston where my boxcar was waiting on a siding.
WINTER TRAVEL
When my neighbours, who had come to watch me load my horses, saw the kind of trees I had piled on the loading dock there was a lot mumbling and strange looks coming in my direction. It was as if they wanted to say something but were holding back out of politeness.
With the trees piled high at one end of the boxcar, the horses settled comfortably at the other end, I was stationed in the middle with my gear.
The engine backed into our coupling and we were off. This would be the third trip that I had made in that fashion and I always enjoyed drifting along in the company of my animal companions isolated from my day-to-day concerns. However, those trips had been made in summer and spring and I was not prepared for was about to happen as we moved out of Nova Scotia and headed west.
In the interest of brevity, I will refer you to some scenes from the film, Doctor Zhivago, in particular those involving the frigid mid-winter box car trips on the Trans Siberian Railway. Winter set in with a vengeance as soon as I hit the New Brunswick border and didn’t let up for the remainder of the trip.
At various times, I was soaked, frozen, battered and bruised repeatedly mile after mile all the way to Ontario. I survived the trip by staying in my sleeping bag most of the time and the rest mounted on one of the horses with a blanket wrapped around me draped over the animal’s rump. The heat wafting up from the horse and under my cover was glorious.
I was quite the sight when my car was finally shunted into the Kitchener Livestock Sales Yard. After seeing the horses safely off-loaded, I made my way to a nearby motel and set about rejuvenating myself in a hot shower before meeting with the Mennonites the following day.
CAT SPRUCE
I watched from a borrowed pickup truck, loaded with my trees, as my horses, hooked behind the new owners’ buggies, trotted off into the distance. It was about an hour’s drive to Toronto where I had arranged to meet with a man who ran a Christmas tree lot. He had identified himself as a Maritimer, who had come down the road several years earlier.
When I arrived at his place of business, after some friendly banter, he climbed up onto my truck for a closer look.
“Are all these trees the same?” he asked, stepping down from the tailgate.
“Yup, all the same breed and fresh cut last week,” I bragged.
“You do know that they are pasture spruce?” he continued.
“Yes, I do and most of them are right out of my own pasture.”
“I guess you know what folks down east also call these trees?”
He had me there, so I let him continue.
“They’re called cat spruce and with good cause.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, it’s like this, sonny. When those trees get into a house with the heat on, they smell exactly like cat urine.
I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that when you were on the train with them.”
I shot back defensively, “With all the horse manure and the diesel fumes I was inhaling, a real cat could have peed on my foot and I wouldn’t have smelled it!”
After grovelling and pleading for the better part of an hour, the man agreed to take the questionable trees off my hands for a dollar a piece saying he might find some buyers who intended them for outdoor display.
I took him at his word but, as I made my way home, poorer but wiser than when I had set out, I couldn’t help but worry that I might be responsible for several kids in unsuspecting city homes waking up on Christmas morning convinced that the kitten they had been hoping for was concealed somewhere in one of the big brightly wrapped boxes under one of my trees!
“They’re called cat spruce and with good cause.” “What do you mean?” I asked.
Garry Leeson, who lives in Harmony, Kings County, is author of The Dome Chronicles about his career in the Toronto Metropolitan Police and his move back to rural Nova Scotia.