August 21, 2020

UPDATE: TOWN CHAINSAWS ‘BUTCHERED’ HEDGE,’ INVADING FAMILY’S PRIVACY

GRAVENHURST — What do you do when cutbacks go too far?

Invade your space and take away your privacy.

You fight back.

That’s what Laurie Dixon and Ray Evans are doing after public works staff “butchered” a hedge on Bethune Drive.

“Some people don’t have appreciation for 100-year-old trees … and no respect for homeowners,” says Dixon.

The couple live at the southwest corner of Bethune and Main Street in Gravenhurst.

They’re angry at the Town of Gravenhurst, they now believe, and its chainsaw-wielding workers who they say went too far clear-cutting cedars on a path beside their home built in 1888 and opening their backyard to public scrutiny of passing-by pedestrians and busy, noisy traffic.

They “butchered it” and “made it look “ugly,” Dixon told MuskokaTODAY.com.

What was supposed to be a “two-foot” brush-back of overhang in keeping with “complaints,” opened a chasm in good neighbour relations with the town.

All for the sake of a few feet — which was more than double that deep along most of 100 feet.

At first they thought it was the district staff they saw, as it is a district road; but now believe it may have been Gravenhurst public works.

Dixon corrected herself later in the day after getting a return call from the district saying they didn’t issue a work order on Bethune.

She now has a call into the town.

“We were so upset yesterday we didn’t pay any attention to the logo on the truck.”

“Anyway, who uses chainsaws to trim a few branches,” asked Evans?

The couple, who have owned the house across from the Muskoka Shores for 25 years, awoke yesterday to the sound of chainsaws and a crew of six working without notice to them.

By the time they got outside “half the hedge” — planted more than a century ago and nurtured and maintained by the other two homeowners of the double lot — was gone.

Dixon said they asked the workers to stop until they could consult someone.

The sympathetic supervisor admitted “they should have told them beforehand,” said Dixon.

But by then the damage in their minds had been done and in an hour they were left to suffer the consequences.

She said it was like a slash and burn.

“I just wish they had consulted us before cutting,” an exasperated Dixon said. “And we could have told them to leave some green” on the lush 20-foot-high privacy hedge that surrounds them on all sides.

She added it was the “attitude” that also bothered her.

“They said ‘it would grow back.’”

A look at the property today — inside and out — clearly shows gaps exposing the family to breaches in the branches, which they also consider safety concerns.

“And they didn’t even clean up the litter” strewn along the path next when they took away the trimmed limbs, Evans lamented.

Dixon, who works online in her home as an international shipping co-ordinator, said before yesterday they “had complete privacy” from noisy cars, trucks and motorcycles along Bethune Drive

Now “we don’t have that little bit of sound barrier.”

They plan to consult an arborist about the tree damage and talk further to the district on correcting the oversight.

The couple thinks reparation for the unsightly mess should now include a fence or some other kind of sound attenuation to mitigate the problem of a government-sanctioned invasion of privacy.