February 16, 2010 Literary Arts

Canada’s other game

First-time author Josh Massey discusses tree-planting culture

by Christopher Olson

GRAPHIC VIVIEN LEUNG

McGill graduate Josh Massey would like to see another sport added to the Olympic Games: tree-planting.

“I’m pretty sure that if we had a Team Canada of tree planters, they would out-plant anyone in the world,” said Massey from his home in northern British Columbia.

“Growing up in Canada, you look for things that are expressions of Canada,” he continued. “Tree-planting is one of those things that goes side-by-side with hockey, something that maybe doesn’t define us as Canadians but is something we’re really good at.”

Massey started as a tree-planter while living in Ontario before taking root in northern B.C., where he was struck by the unique culture belonging to tree-planters.

“We have these hardcore professional planters with customized shovels working out in their off season, like, giv’r, you know?” he recalled.

While studying at McGill at age 22, Massey began work on We Will All Be Trees, a novel which attempts to depict and preserve tree-planting culture.

“[Tree-planting] takes people out of their urban context and the comforts of their urban life and it throws you into this primeval kind of caveman-like society where all the trappings of propriety, cleanliness and manners falls to the wayside,” he said.

We Will All Be Trees—the titular line was stolen from Dante, by way of Atwood—reflects the threat of homogeneity in both human and tree circles.

For instance, said Massey, planters in B.C. thought that by replanting deforested areas with Lodgepole pines, which grow quickly, they could speed up the process of harvesting. They didn’t count on the mountain Pine Beetle, however, which devastated the ecosystem when presented hordes upon hordes of its favourite snack. The same is happening to cultural diversity by way of westernization and industrialization, said Massey.

“Planting is part of the forestry industry,” he admits, “but it’s a self-corrective measure, so the intent there is good but it’s still tied to the forestry industry as a whole. You’re not really providing a solution, you’re just putting a Band-Aid on something.”
Massey isn’t what some might consider a treehugger, though.

“There’s different ways you can look at [the forestry industry],” said Massey. “You can be cynical about tree-planting and forestry or you can be sort of realistic about it.

“It’s so easy to just criticize these industries,” he continued, “and then it’s like, shit, I drive my car with gas in it, and I’m writing on a piece of paper that came from trees.”

Getting the opinion of his coworkers on the book was important to Massey, to show that he had accurately represented life as a planter in Canada’s north.

“I’m not trying to represent exactly the way it was up there as a writer,” said Massey. “I was just sort of called upon to represent things fairly accurately.”

We Will All Be Trees
Josh Massey
Conundrum Press
254 pp
$15