Last week, the City of Vancouver began implementing an ambitious plan to plant orchards in city parks. The apple, cherry, plum and pear trees will be cared for by young people from nearby schools and are part of a long-term project to create and edible urban ecosystem.
It’s a great idea. Let’s turn all our parks into productive as well as recreational spaces. I have my doubts, however, about the use of child labour.
Vancouver’s arboriculture manager, Bill Manning, quoted in the Vancouver Sun, says: “We have kids coming out and planting and taking ownership and that is key to making this work.”
I distinctly recall a number of “taking ownership” conversations in our own house over the years, chiefly around things like walking the dog, feeding the dog and the cats, weeding the garden, bringing dirty dishes back to the kitchen, shoveling the snow and doing homework, just to name a few.
If we had relied on our kids to take “ownership” we would now be facing animal cruelty charges, eating nettle salads off paper plates, using ice-climbing gear to get down the front steps and preparing our beloved offspring for minimum-wage careers at the local call centre.
Good luck, Vancouver.
I note that Mr. Manning did not suggest for a second that the children would actually eat the fruit. That would require too much suspension of disbelief. If my own children are typical (and all the other parents down at the support group suggest they are), growing fruit is a waste of time. Growing potato chip trees would be more like it (especially if they were those really good flavours like ketchup or dill pickle).
Every week, in a paroxysm of parental guilt, we load our shopping cart with fresh fruit so our children will be able to voluntarily eat at least eight servings a day. Hope springs eternal as we place bowls of apples, oranges, kiwis and pears in strategic spots throughout the house only to hear, time and time again, the classic call of the spoiled-rotten North American child in distress: “There is nothing to eat in this house!”
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