Advice from Stephen Smith – “Take care of the trees you have, and plant some more. There are a lot of choices of beautiful, successful, native trees.”
Why more trees? Quite simply, the tree canopy helps with general and house cooling during the hot summers, and that’s only a start.
Smith knows what he’s talking about.
Arborist Steve Smith grew up near Dundas Street and the Humber River and spent a lot of his youth in those west-end ravines. He then chose a forestry program at Fleming College. For the next decade or so, he worked on contracts with forest-related projects, usually in urban areas. In 1993, he decided the time had come to launch his own business “to improve urban forests,” Urban Forest Associates – UFORA for its website www.UFORA.ca. Joining Steve as senior staff is Alex Karney, with forest conservation degrees from the University of Toronto. Together they supervise a crew of 13 during the summer and eight in the winter.
There is a specific Leaside connection as well. Canvarco Road, east off Laird Drive, is home to several small, independent enterprises, one of which is the UFORA plant nursery, located there for the past 15 years.
UFORA provides many services. For instance, homeowners with a renovation project who also have trees on their property can hire Steve to ensure their trees are protected during the process. If you need City permits for tree work, he’s your guy – he’s experienced working with the City and Toronto Region Conservation Authority to get permits. He not only guarantees your trees are properly protected during your renovation, but he also has a habit of dropping by to visit “his” trees, seeing how they’re doing and determining if they need help even after the contract is finished.
Invasive species abound
Many Norway maples (an invasive species) were planted in Leaside 40 years ago and are now coming to the end of their lifecycle. When the time comes for them to be replaced, Steve and his crew can recommend desirable native replacement trees and even do the planting. As well, knowing that most of Leaside’s soil has a clay base, “hard as a rock,” Steve’s team encourage homeowners to give rainwater a chance to soak in by having as many permeable surfaces as possible on their property.
There are many invasive species of trees and shrubs on public lands in the City of Toronto. In areas where the City wants to plant native trees, he and his crew are hired during the winter to treat the invasives so they can be removed before the planting season. Often, he and his crew will be out with volunteers ensuring the new planting is done carefully and properly.
When the new walkway from Chorley Park in North Rosedale down to the Evergreen Brickworks was built, it was UFORA workers doing the plantings for the City and looking after them for those crucial first few years.
Steve spent many years as a volunteer between 1989 and 2008 with Bring Back the Don, the mainly volunteer task force working to restore the Don River watershed. This group can be proud of its many success stories over the years, but its crowning achievement actually was completed after the wrap-up of the group, with the reconfiguration and naturalization of the mouth of the Don River from the old Keating Channel to the new mouth of the Don River, creating the beautiful new park, Biidaasige, which opened in July 2025. UFORA, hired by the main contractor, EllisDon, oversaw all the plantings.
If going on an informative urban tree walk somewhere in the city is something that might interest you, remember Steve Smith’s name. He’s often invited by groups to lead these tours, and you’ll definitely learn something new, useful and green.
