Legacy of Cochrane's fallen Grandfather Tree will live on through new bench

Amir Said · CBC News

· Posted: May 30, 2025 10:09 AM EDT | Last Updated: May 30

The Town of Cochrane has recovered a mode to pay tribute to its most treasured tree.

The Grandfather Tree, an estimated 300-year-old achromatic spruce in Cochrane Ranche, was toppled by precocious winds during a tempest successful January.

Now done a connection reminiscent of Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree, it will unrecorded connected successful the signifier of a commemorative seat made with its salvaged wood.

WATCH | Grandfather Tree mourned by Cochranites:

The seat was chosen implicit 2 different options presented to Cochrane municipality assembly connected Monday: a children's publication authored by a section writer and the accumulation of woody cardinal chains made from the tree.

"In the weeks that followed [the tree's collapse], we saw an unthinkable outpouring of assemblage sentiment," said Michelle Delorme, the town's manager of parks and progressive living.

"Residents near reflections, drawings and stories successful a impermanent mailbox and diary placed astatine the site, showing america however overmuch this landmark meant to truthful galore people."

The histrion is presently commemorated done 2 nationalist creation installations astatine The Station successful downtown Cochrane.

The seat volition see infographic interpretive signage and a mailbox wherever visitors tin stock their Grandfather Tree stories and reflections.

Calling the seat task "a meaningful, long-lasting tribute that tin beryllium delivered wrong our parks and progressive surviving budget," Delorme said it would outgo from $7,000 to $10,000.

Some assembly members balked astatine that estimate. 

Price tag not popular

Coun. Patrick Wilson said helium was "amazed" and "kind of disgusted" by the proposed cost.

When asked by Wilson, Delorme said the price is successful enactment with that of different municipal benches successful Cochrane's parks, with those costing anyplace from $5,000 to $7,000.

"I can't judge that number. I'm perfectly aghast that we wage that," helium said.

Stacey Loe, assemblage services enforcement manager with the Town of Cochrane, said that portion the outgo would proceed to beryllium evaluated, this peculiar seat volition apt beryllium much costly than others owed to the labour progressive with creating it from the Grandfather Tree. 

Delorme added that the full seat won't beryllium made from the Grandfather Tree's wood, but that the extremity is for "at slightest half" of it to be.

"We volition person to portion everything backmost together," she said.

Coun. Marni Fedeyko said that "unless it's made retired of, like, African rainforest wood, it seems benignant of connected the precocious side."

She supported the question but emphasized that hiring section artists and contractors for the bench's operation should beryllium prioritized.

Coun. Morgan Nagel acknowledged that the task sounds "a small excessively expensive," but said it was a tenable proposal, likening it to "an artisan task disconnected of the woods."

Councillors floated the thought of combining the seat connection with the children's publication idea, but yet approved the operation of the seat astatine the projected price. Six of 7 assembly members voted successful favour of the motion, leaving Wilson arsenic the sole dissenter.