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Editorial

TORONTO NEEDS ARBORISTS, NOT TREE HUGGERS


August 3, 1999

According to the newly-launched Green Tourism Association, "ecotourism is the fastest growing sector in the tourism industry."

Green Tourism is an idea whose time has come. On July 15, the Association launched the first ever GREEN map of Toronto, and may have taken some summer sleepy city councillors by surprise.

"Ours is the 22nd map of the international Green Map System and the second green map in Canada (the first was Montreal) with Calgary and Ottawa following suit," the Association boasts in a recent letter to the editor. "Response to the map has been positive, overwhelming and great! We only have 36,000 of our 60,000 maps left after the first week and a half."

The Green Tourism Association is a non-profit organization whose mission is to develop and cultivate a green tourism industry within the Toronto region.

Touted as the OTHER Map of Toronto, the green map highlights other urban green tourism and activities and businesses, including green tour options, bike rental locations, transit information, green gallieries and theatres, organic produce, natural food stores and more.

The latest ecotourism association, bless their tofu fits right in there with the smoke-free restaurants advertised in newspapers like Now Magazine with taxpayer's money from the City of Toronto purse.

In any case, distributing "over 24,000 maps in six days" is no mean feat. TFP was one of the first to call and find out how.

A message on the Green Tourism Association voice mail explained that someone called Anna was on holidays until August 4, on July 30, the day of our telephone call The same voice mail message informed telephone callers to contact Rachel Dodds, at a Toronto City Hall telephone number.

Dodds is Association Product Development/Marketing Coordinator.

"The City is sponsoring our rent," Dodds said from her office at the city's Moving the Economy department.

Dodds claims that the fast map distribution could be explained by its availability at City Civic Centres, Heritage Toronto attractions, participating green businesses and various information centres across the city.

Meanwhile, according to horticultural consultant and Toronto Free Press gardening columnist Wes Porter, the staff at Toronto Parks is down by some 30 percent, including many arborists and park staff who were previously dismissed.

Porter says Coun. Kyle Rae worries that staff cannot even find time to keep their newly-planted trees watered--with some 20 percent of the trees dying due to a lack of water.

Perhaps before the City of Toronto gets too caught up in the political opportunism, Jack Layton style of "truly caring" about the environment, they should start looking after our trees.

Layton, who traded his make Toronto a nuclear-weapons free zone for making the city the first pesticide-free zone, could learn from the mantra of Wes Porter: "A mature maple, it has been claimed, can absorb the pollution produced by an automobile."