Sugar Maple Trees

These two landmark Sugar Maple trees stand approximately 25 metres tall on the edge of an historic rural road in Whonnock, between a public transportation route and a private lot located at 26721 100 Avenue, Maple Ridge.

The heritage value of these mature Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum) is their association with early settlement of pioneering families coming from Eastern Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. William Charles Drewry (1876-1948) and his wife, Mary Jane Drewry (1880-1964), arrived in Whonnock from Perth, Ontario in 1914 and established a poultry farm. They brought these two trees with them as saplings, to act as a reminder of their former home.

Possessing a particular reverence within the community of Maple Ridge as a symbol of the City, the Sugar Maples are reminders of early settlers who came from other parts of Canada and abroad and helped to form what is now Maple Ridge. The maples also indicate the domestication of the once wild and undeveloped property in Whonnock that would have occurred as settlers occupied local lands.

The historic community of Whonnock is characterized both by its rural and treed nature, heightened by these Sugar Maples.

Source: Planning Department, City of Maple Ridge

Key elements that define the heritage character of these two mature Sugar Maples include their:

- species (Acer saccharum)

- orientation to 100 Avenue, which is an important historic road, marking the transition from a public transportation route to private property

- presence of the pairing two mature specimens as part of the streetscape

- proportion and massing of the tree canopies

- deciduous nature of the trees, changing with the seasons: creating shade in the summer and vivid fall foliage in the autumn