My first big tree memory is unhappy. I was “helping my father, you see, cut firewood from a large previously felled Douglas fir. This was about 150 ft. from the stump and the trunk was about 5 ft. thick. Father was using an 8 ft. long crosscut saw, and my job was to watch the curly chips being pushed out of the kerf on the other side of the log. At age 3, that was about all I could do to ‘help’. But then I leaned too close to pick up some long curls, and straightened up in time to catch the moving saw teeth on top of my head. That ended my job, and his too, for that day.

By two years later my siblings and I were climbing up the 12 ft. high stumps to play on the 10 ft. wide surface. Later I measured the distance to the top of the tree, still lying half rotten on the ground. 264 ft. it was.

That started my quest for bigger and better trees. Two more Fir stumps similar in size, and one Red Cedar stump 14 ft. across, and one standing Fir 43 ft. in circumference.

The nearest tree to that size in the Sooke area now is a 9 ft. diameter, 240 ft. high tree on private property along the Sooke River near the potholes.

In later years, when I had the means to travel farther west, I visited the famous Red Creek Fir near Port Renfrew, recognized now as the largest of its kind in the world. It is marginally bigger than the one of my childhood. Only a few miles away in San Juan River valley stands what is said to be the largest Sitka Spruce tree in Canada with a diameter of 19.3 ft. height of 250 ft.

But still farther west, in the Carmanah and Walbran valleys blessed (or cursed) with heavier rainfall – think 150 to 200 inches per year – I found, in the course of many, many days of searching, Spruce trees in excess of 14 ft. in circumference and up to 311 ft. high. Also a number of Western Red Cedars 15 and 16 ft. in diameter.

But in nearby Cheewaht Lake area I came upon the Mother Lode – many Cedars 15 to 18 ft. in diameter, of them all the Cheewaht Cedar, the largest tree in Canada, and arguably the biggest Cedar tree in the world. 63 ft. in circumference and 192 ft. tall.

It boggles the mind to think that this was a full-grown tree long before the Roman Empire came into existence! And is still standing in good health.

- Maywell Wickheim