532-year-old N.S. hemlock claims record for oldest tree in the Maritimes
CBC
Nova Scotia only has a tiny fraction of old-growth forest left.
But thanks to research completed this summer, the province can lay claim to having the oldest tree on record in the Maritimes.
It's a 532-year-old eastern hemlock located in a stand not far from the South Panuke Wilderness Area, northwest of Hubbards.
The land used to be owned by the Bowater Mersey Paper Company. The province bought the parcel, along with many others, in 2012.
This summer, forest researchers with Nova Scotia's Department of Natural Resources and Renewables took core samples of roughly 100 trees in a small old-growth stand.
After counting the rings on one tree sample, Dalhousie University student Meaghan Pollock approached colleague Emily Woudstra.
"She said, 'I think we have aged [this tree at] 500 years old,' and I was like, 'No way! I don't believe that,'" said Woudstra. "So go show Brad and I want to count this afterwards, too."
Brad Butt, a forest researcher, didn't believe it either until he had a closer look at the sample.
"Yeah, there is definitely some excitement there," said Butt. "You kind of … stop the clock for a minute and everybody had a pause to really have a look at it."
Woudstra counted the rings again to ensure the count was correct.
"[There] was kind of a buzz around the office and people kept asking if they could see the core sample, too."
To be certain about the tree's age, the province shipped the sample to Mount Allison University's Ben Phillips. Phillips is a dendrochronologist, or an expert in tree rings.
"This tree has 532 measurable tree rings," Phillips said during a recent video chat. "I measured every single one of them under a microscope to a thousandth of a millimetre.
"Some of those rings only had two to three cells in width."
Two years after a man went missing in Scarborough, Toronto police are renewing the investigation in hopes that the public will bring forward more information.
A musical instrument created in Guelph, Ont., has been thrust onto the international stage — or rather, screen.
More than 1,000 Maritime Electric customers are without power after high winds blew across the Island Friday night into Saturday.
The Supreme Court of Canada is deliberating a case that could shape the way sentences are handed down in cases where both the offender and victim are Indigenous, which some Nunavut lawyers say could have ramifications for the Inuit-majority territory.
A man barricaded in a former church in Welland, Ont., was taken into custody early Saturday, nearly 24 hours into a standoff that began over a fence dispute.
Peel police are investigating after a Friday night shooting in Mississauga left one person dead, police said.
Another busy construction season has come to an end in London, and the city is already looking ahead to next spring when a slew of new projects are expected to begin.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has begun to lay out publicly what he sees as boundaries when dealing with China, as his government wades into a new relationship with the economic giant.
Ferry crossings are cancelled and over a thousand households are left without power Saturday morning, due to high winds and severe weather conditions.
Tens of thousands of Nova Scotia Power customers are waking up without power on Saturday morning after high winds and rain hit the province on Friday night.
Statistics Canada is reporting a population decrease last quarter for New Brunswick — its largest quarterly decline since the 1970s, according to an economic development consultant.
Residents clapped, danced, sang and cried in the Anishinaabe community of Kitcisakik this week when the lights were finally turned on for the first time.
A man is suing three members of a Winnipeg family and a real estate broker he alleges used his intellectual disability to financially exploit him through property deals in Canada and India, leaving him out hundreds of thousands of dollars.