Tree celebrated in Oxford before being gifted to Boston
Tree to go on 4-day tour, including sendoff at Halifax's Grand Parade Friday morning
Nova Scotia's annual ritual of making a celebrity out of a tree began today in Oxford, N.S.
The "Tree for Boston" was carefully cut down this morning under blue skies as about 200 people watched, including carol-singing schoolchildren.
The 14-metre white spruce now starts a four-day tour in which it is feted and paraded and eventually makes its 1,100-kilometre journey to Massachusetts.
The huge Christmas tree is a gift meant to show Haligonians' gratitude for the help Bostonians provided after the devastating Halifax Explosion 101 years ago.
The province's lands and forestry minister, Iain Rankin, was in Oxford for the tree-cutting, as was Jane Abram, a Mi'kmaq elder from Millbrook First Nation, Mayor Trish Stewart and carollers from Oxford Regional Elementary.
Each year, Nova Scotians find a huge Christmas tree, tie up the branches, load it onto a flatbed and truck it to Boston.<br>In 1917, Boston sent trainloads of doctors & supplies following the Halifax Explosion. <br>This is the annual “thank you” for their help. Here’s this year’s tree: <a href="https://t.co/FT1R4R3MVw">pic.twitter.com/FT1R4R3MVw</a>
—@Brett_CBCThe tree was to be put on public display at the Rath Eastlink Community Centre in Truro this afternoon.
It had been scheduled for a public sendoff at Halifax's Grand Parade on Friday morning with the mayor, U.S. consul and others, but the province says the event has been cancelled "due to a forecast of inclement weather."
The tree is still scheduled to stick around Halifax for another day and appear in Saturday night's Chronicle Herald Holiday Parade of Lights in Halifax.
On Sunday morning, it will be displayed once again, at the Amherst, N.S., Atlantic Superstore.
Last year, the tree was given a Halifax police escort to the U.S. border, and also stopped in Augusta, Maine, en route to Boston
Caused by the collision of two wartime ships — one of which was carrying explosives — the Halifax Explosion killed about 2,000 people, wounded 9,000 and flattened a wide swath of the port city, including a Mi'kmaq village on the other side of the harbour.
It remains one of Canada's worst human-caused disasters.
In 2015, the province spent $234,000 transporting the tree and staging ceremonies in Halifax and Boston, where the annual tree-lighting on the Boston Common typically attracts about 20,000 people, and is carried live on local television.