CelebriTree Program (2024)

Northern Pin Oak is an attractive shade tree, native to southern Ontario. Its widely lobed leaves come out red in the spring, change to shiny green and then turn a dark red, orange or brown in the fall. Its acorns provide food for wildlife. This oak has hard and strong wood suitable for flooring, furniture and other applications. It will grow to about 15 metres when mature. The tree is located about 60 metres north of the gate at the north end of the Building 72 parking lot, in an opening at the bottom of the hill.

Celebrating Cally (Carolyn) Chornenky

Cally Chornenky, one of the most luminous people to grace our world, absolutely loved the Dominion Arboretum, Ornamental Gardens, and Central Experimental Farm.

In the verdant places there, and in the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, she found beauty, respite, and joy, spending countless hours walking, skiing, snowshoeing, studying, appreciating, and marvelling at it all.

Cally excelled at so many things and in so many ways, and was unfailingly warm, kind, supportive, and profoundly modest. Though she considered herself to be quite ordinary, she was anything but that!

A wonderful mother, she (with her husband of 45 years, Greg, close alongside) raised two daughters with love, patience, and wisdom, instilling in them her own wonderful senses of curiosity, responsibility, generosity, advocacy, kindness, and fun! In the wonderful, principled, and successful women they are today, her gentle hand is clearly evident, and her love and devotion well-rewarded. 

Cally, an avid and gifted gardener, having grown much of our own food for decades, and having created a true oasis of gardens around our home, decided, as our daughters grew up, to study horticulture at Algonquin College. Upon becoming a horticulturist, she promptly joined a small gardening company, taking over within a short time as the two principals retired. She kept her firm small and personal by hiring only women horticulturists, only caring for gardens of private residences, and always treating her clients and partners with consideration. Her clients loved her and, rigorous as it was, Cally loved her work – a true avocation if there ever was one. 

Indefatigably industrious, Cally usually had at least two (different, paying) jobs on the go. Both she and Greg shared not just their worldview, work ethic, and principles, but also delighted in sharing music, love, laughter, and a deep appreciation for the infinite wonder of our natural world. She never failed to be awed by the endless variety, breathtaking beauty, and perfect symmetry of Existence. And simply by being herself, innately, Cally actually was one of those indispensable elements which help in making everything work together so beautifully.  

Cally loved reading and voraciously read all the time, clearly reflected in her keen interest in everything, her wonderfully fertile imagination, her ethics, and her critical thinking. And, unsurprisingly, Cally had a deliciously dry and delightful sense of humour, and always could crack us up with a well-chosen word.

Cally delighted in her family and friends, and time in her company was full of love, laughter, and light. As evidenced by her legacy of the truly good humans she created and raised, the living tapestry of trees, flowers, and plants she tended, and the warmth and pure joy of her company, Cally showed the way to live a considered, altruistic, and reciprocal life of engagement, responsibility, and kindness, while having a whole lot of fun on the way. Our whole world is so much the better for having had Cally in it ✨

All our love, Greg, Sarah, and Alexis

Donated by Greg Bannoff

A blue tree icon is a 2024 CelebriTree. A red tree icon is a 2023 CelebriTree.