As published on Tree Canada's blog, December 10, 2025. As we head into the holiday season, I find myself returning, as I often do, to the quiet, resolute presence of trees as sentinels in our lives. Growing up Armenian in Canada, I was raised with a deep sense of ancestry and attachment to the land,… Continue reading Alder things considered: Holiday reflections on trees, culture and connection
As published in The Forestry Chronicle 2024, VOL. 100, No 2 Context Over the past decade, it has been refreshing to witness the shift in urban forestry conservation dialogues and practice to include green equity. What were once dominant narratives of methods, protocols and frameworks increasingly include broader considerations for systemic injustice, marginalization, and vulnerability.… Continue reading Equity in Canada’s Urban Forests
As published in City Trees, September/October 2021 issue. Modified excerpt from the author’s PhD dissertation, Learning from Limbwalkers: Arborists’ Stories in Southern Ontario’s Urban Forests (Bardekjian, 2015). My background is rooted in English literature, creative writing, anthropology, and forest conservation. Throughout my studies, much of my experience and training focused on creative, applied, and technical… Continue reading Lived Experience, Essential Narratives, Part 1: How Stories from Urban Foresters and Arborists Can Inform Our Field at Large
As published on Tree Canada's blog, June 8, 2021. At Tree Canada we do more than plant trees. A tree alone does not build a community simply by its presence; however, a community can be built around a tree when people are mobilized and engaged in various ways, and on multiple levels. In the past… Continue reading Considering Diversity, Social Inclusion, and Equity through Urban Forest Collaborations
Edited version published on Tree Canada website on March 2, 2021 “Boy, I’m sure glad I’m not your husband.” I remember my mind racing over the last few minutes of the discussion at an event I was leading, and thinking about what, if anything, I had said or done, to warrant such an inappropriate comment.… Continue reading Where Women Choose to Walk: Paths to Improving Cities and Nature
Adrina C. Bardekjian, MFC, PhD 