DUNCAN, B.C. — That last time Glen McLeod sat on his beloved tree’s bulbous base, he had to say goodbye. “It was a horrible feeling,” Glen says. He tried to everything to rehabilitate the large maple tree before realizing it was beyond repair. “I knew I couldn’t save it,” he says. After years of his daughters playing around it and his dog sleeping under it, the tree that had helped turn his family’s house into a home was dead. So, Glen wondered if he could find a way to keep its legacy alive. “There’s all kinds of stuff you can do with burls,” Glen says. He thought he could cut up the growth at the base of the tree’s trunk and turn the pieces into a couple of commemorative bowls or something. But then he discovered this was just the tip of the iceberg; the burl was growing three feet underground. “So, I thought I’d dig it out by hand,” Glen smiles. Despite being a professional backhoe operator, Glen felt compelled to keep the 6,000-pound burl intact and dig it out with a shovel. “A lot of people thought I was crazy,” Glen laughs. Yet three weeks later, he did what they said he couldn’t. And then, despite having no previous experience, Glen started transforming it. “I knew that one day I was going to have something there,” Glen says. Glen spent the next six years sanding and polishing the burl for more than 20 hours a week, revealing patterns in the would he found mesmerizing. “I wouldn’t think about my job. I would just concentrate on that,” Glen says. “I would come out and just be.” It was part hobby, part therapy, and for the hundreds of people who visited the burl after walking by and noticing it displayed at the end of Glen’s driveway, it was all good. “The reaction I get, it’s incredible,” Glen says before showing people of all ages smiling and posing with the burl. “A labour of love is what most people call it.” And then there was the one person who called it “inspiring” after wrapping her arms around the burl, wiping away tears, and revealing she’d just beaten cancer. “She said. ‘This reminds me of (my cancer journey),’” Glen says. “‘You’ve taken something that was dead and brought it back to life.’” The next chapter in the burl’s life, however, is unknown. Glen must downsize and can’t bring the burl with him. He is hoping someone from a university or airport will find a place to display it. “I can’t sell the house and leave it here,” Glen says, before laughing. “Unless somebody wants to buy it and have a (burl) museum here.” It’s already left a legacy here. Glen found a baby tree sprouting near where the burl once grew. After nurturing it in a pot for three years, he planted it were its parent tree once stood, where it’s now thriving. “That’s the way I’m giving back to nature,” Glen smiles. It’s an act of gratitude for the all the joy the burl’s brought to so many, and will hopefully continue to.
