It had been raining for most of the month of April and most of us who lived in the apartments of this old 100 year old house noticed that there were a few green leaves and twigs on the Great Oak in the front yard. The rest of the neighbour trees appeared to springing to life with light green foliage or flowers. On this dark and very rainy night, I returned to my home after dinner with some friends to find that the streetlights on my street were off and the police had block off the road.
I parked on an adjacent street and as I approached my home, I saw the fallen tree which crushed one of my house neighbours. They were a couple from Argentina who were doing their PhDs at McMaster university. I learnt later that they had just returned home as well and as they entered the front door of the house, there was a loud crack. The couple turned around to witness the crush of their car by the dying oak. It was naturally quite fortunate that they were not in the car itself.
At about 11 pm, the city of Hamilton municipal crew came along and started the clean up. One crew chain-sawed the branches while another crew fed the pieces into a wood chipper. The noise was horrendous and lasted well into the early morning hours. Since we could not sleep, most of my house neighbours came out to watch the clean up with a few glasses of wine.
By morning, this was all that remained of the Great Oak and later, another truck came to take the trunk away as well.
The Argentina couple stared in disbelief at the state of their car. There was significant structural damage that the car was deemed a write-off by the insurance. In fact, they used copies of these pictures to get their full claim.