The King's Oak

On 12 May 1937, while George VI was being crowned in London, Toronto put an oak in the ground on the lakeshore and planted about 150 more trees around it before the day was out. The oak is the centre of the arrangement. Around it run concentric rings of silver maples, the Empire Circle, one ring for each dominion and colony of an empire that has since stopped existing. The rings are still there. So is the oak, 89 years on, an ordinary pedunculate oak carrying a considerable amount of ceremony: a stone and plaque beside it, dedicated by Justice John A. Hope and unveiled by Sir William Mulock in August 1938. Then it happened again. On 6 May 2023, for the coronation of Charles III, the city planted a companion oak next to the first one and added a second plaque. Eighty-six years apart, the same gesture, the same species, the same patch of grass. The second planting is also the reason we know the first tree is still standing. This is the youngest tree on this page and the only one whose birthday is known to the day; every other age here comes off a tape measure around a trunk. Coronation Park has since been restored in phases, and the first phase went to this oak and its circle of maples.