The Red Oak of Queen Elizabeth Driveway

The register that protects this oak does not say when it was planted, and for once that gap is not an oversight: unlike the exotic and ornamental trees the Ottawa Improvement Commission planted along Queen Elizabeth Driveway around 1900, red oak is native to this stretch of the Rideau valley, so this one could easily predate the parkway's own landscaping of winding trails and artificial mounds rather than belong to it. The National Capital Commission's own description calls it simply huge, singling it out among a section of driveway otherwise planted with imported ornamentals for the contrast a native tree makes against them. It stands about 200 metres south of the parkway's Mound Elm, near where Queen Elizabeth Driveway runs along the canal south of Dow's Lake. Nobody has measured its girth or dated it, so both remain open questions: if you have stood under it with a tape measure, this is the tree to tell us about.