John Watson: A talent for trees

His father did it, he does it and it remains to be seen if his 14-year-old son will carry on the tradition, making three generations of Watsons the keepers of the Morgan Arboretum (his daughter has already opted to study music).

For the past 21 years, John Watson has been raising, planting and maintaining the thousands of trees in the 680-acre forest near the Macdonald Campus. You might say he was born for the job. He was born, in fact, in a little white house nearby that visitors can glimpse as they turn down the road to the arboretum. That's where Watson, his three brothers and a sister grew up. The family planted plenty of trees alongside father James Watson, now 84. "McGill got a lot of free labour out of us," chuckles the arboretum's forest operations manager.

While Watson learned a great deal at his father's side, one thing he didn't learn from Watson senior was off-the-ground work. "You wouldn't catch Dad in anything over five foot tall."

His father might prefer keeping his feet on the ground, but John Watson always had it in him to climb. At age 15, he was "climbing the tallest trees in Montreal for $1.69 an hour," working that summer for the Canadian Shade Tree Service, "the oldest service in Montreal."

Watson learned some of his trade during two summers at the CSTS, then got his theoretical training at Macdonald College (as it was then known) in horticulture. He pursued his studies at the University of Guelph, returning to Montreal to set up his own company.

He sold the business to his brother Oliver in 1976, when McGill asked him to begin an apprenticeship with his father. The plan was for John to take over the arboretum when James Watson retired in 1979.

It's a job that appears to suit him well. Touring the arboretum with Watson is a bit like walking through the town accompanied by the mayor. Nature-lovers, birders, dog-walkers -- everyone stops him and he patiently answers their questions. "Let them develop in the vegetable garden; they'll keep insects away and you can see their habit. Then I'll come over," he tells one arboretum-member, wondering what to do with the Japanese yews she bought from the arboretum nursery last year.

Watson has made a lot of home visits to members' gardens to survey the ice storm's impact. "I've assessed more than 100 homes, telling people what to prune, how to repair their trees and giving cost estimates." In most instances, he says there is no need to rush and he advises waiting for a trusted tree service. He warns people to be selective about hiring a tree service -- check their credentials thoroughly. "Since the ice storm," he says, "there are 15 to 20 new tree services and they're not qualified."

And he's not rushing his own job of single-handedly pruning, repairing and felling the arboretum's trees (students have been hired to do the on-ground work), though he's promised the arboretum's board of directors that the 20 collections of more than 150 species of trees will be cleaned up by the end of October.

Because trees in the arboretum are well chosen and maintained, explains Watson, they suffered less than other trees in the area. The sugar bush was hardly touched, for instance. "Most of what came down should have come down," he says, alerting his visitor, as we round a bend in the arboretum trail, to an impending site of great beauty. Seconds later, an enormous cloud of white flowers fills the pick-up truck's windshield. We've arrived at Blossom Corner and this is a pear tree. "We don't plant enough of them," says the reserved tree-lover.

Like a dancer or a professional athlete, John Watson knows that some day soon he'll have to hang up his shoes -- and spurs, ropes and harness. "It's hard on the knees and shoulders." The coach of Macdonald Campus' woodsmen and woodswomen teams (McGill's winningest student clubs, he notes), Watson regularly shows the students on the squads that the "old guy" can handle himself fairly well. A few years ago, after a lumberjack competition, in a demonstration for CFCF television, Watson climbed a 30-foot-high pole to ring a bell in 3.85 seconds, .35 seconds quicker than the leading university competitor.

Bronwyn Chester

He doesn't understand it, but francophone Quebecers are lapping up his 700-page tome, the Sources of the Self, as if it were a crime novel. Charles Taylor, of course, is no stranger to attention from francophone readers and the francophone media, but the star treatment he has received over Les sources de moi (Les Editions Boréal, 1998, translated by Charlotte Melançon), not to mention the fact that the book is a bestseller, stumps the 66-year-old professor of philosophy.

Taylor was recently the cover story in an issue of Voir, and Le Devoir devoted a full page to Les sources de moi. When asked to appear on the popular TV talk show, Christiane Charette en direct, Taylor wondered: "What am I going to say that's going to interest these viewers? I mean, I'm a philosopher," as reported in a recent article in The Toronto Star. Nevertheless, the philosopher appeared on the little black box and viewers were delighted.

Jean Bernier, director of publications at Boréal, is also delighted. Within three days of the book's first printing, the publishing house had to do a second printing. "It's done extremely well, not just for a book of philosophy, but for any book," he said.

Bernier explains the popularity of Les sources de moi by saying that francophones know and listen to Taylor, and there is a thirst out there for reflection on the question of identity that goes beyond the rhetoric of the politicians. Furthermore, while the nine-year-old classic of modern philosophy is general in its discussion of identity, Taylor uses local examples, such as a reference to Mont Tremblant, to illustrate his points.

Finally, says Bernier, philosophy is à la mode in the francophone world. He only wishes he'd published the book earlier.

This argument has been used to resist every technological advance since the Industrial Revolution. Somehow, we are intelligent enough to survive technological innovation, to acclimatize ourselves to our strange new environment and to bend it to our needs.


Brian Smith, a lecturer in the Faculty of Management, addressing the case made by some that reliance on technology will erode students' math skills. Smith, who teaches math and statistics, wrote an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor.

If you grew up in Montreal, linguistics professor Charles Boberg wants to know how you speak. Along with University of Toronto professor Jack Chambers, Boberg is conducting a survey called "Dialectic Topography of Montreal" -- part of a larger study coordinated by Chambers that is examining how Canadians in different cities speak English.

That we all pretty much speak it the same way is not true, says Boberg.

"We don't all talk the way people do in Toronto. There are differences, although there isn't anywhere near as much variation in dialect in Canada as there is in the U.S. or Britain."

English Montrealers, of course, are profoundly affected by their daily contact with French-speakers -- "autoroute" and "depanneur" are common elements of our vocabulary. But we stand out from other Canadians in additional ways.

"If you go to Calgary or Denver, you won't notice much of a difference in how many ethnic groups use English -- you couldn't tell a Jew from an Italian from somebody who's Irish, for instance. You can tell the difference in New York. And you certainly can in Montreal.

"We have very well-entrenched ethnic neighbourhoods in this city with largely isolated ethnic pockets. Somebody growing up in Côte St. Luc could spend 90% of the time talking to other Jews. The same holds true for Italians in St. Michel." That reinforces variations in dialect.

Still, English-speaking Montrealers are united in some respects in the ways in which we use the language. We make a clear distinction between marry and merry -- we pronounce "get married" and "Merry Christmas" very differently. "That distinction isn't really made outside Montreal," says Boberg. "Why Montrealers do it is a great mystery."

Boberg is still on the hunt for research subjects willing to fill out a survey. If you'd like to take part in the study, you can leave a message at 398-4222.

It's trite, I think, at this point in time, to turn around and ask whether or not neglect or physical abuse are things that can potentially be damaging for children. We know that that occurs; we know that from animal studies, we know that from human studies. This is a topic we needn't explore further.


Psychiatry professor Michael Meaney commenting on CBC's The National about a recent study that pointed to links between neglect and poor mental development in children.