The Mound Elm of Queen Elizabeth Driveway

Most of the American elms that once lined Ottawa's streets and parkways are gone, killed by Dutch elm disease starting in the 1960s. This one survived. It stands on an artificial mound built into Queen Elizabeth Driveway around the turn of the 20th century, part of the Ottawa Improvement Commission's original scheme to turn a canal towpath into the capital's first scenic parkway, the same landscaping programme responsible for several of the driveway's other veteran trees. At roughly 120 years old, it predates the epidemic that took out most of its species in the region, which makes it less a curiosity than a survivor: whatever combination of luck, isolation and soil kept this elm alive while the disease worked through Ottawa's canopy is still standing to be seen. No girth has been recorded for it yet. It stands a short walk from Dow's Lake, one more stop on a driveway already known for its early-1900s tree plantings, distinguished from its neighbours by the mound it grows on and by being the kind of tree the region mostly lost.