DAVID HELWIG: That time I outraged Ontario gardeners and learned to respect Suzanne Hanna

The late Dick Peplow, SooToday's founding general manager, wasn't the type to tell an experienced news editor how to do his job.

Dick hired people he trusted, pointed them in the direction he wanted to go, and generally left them alone to do their jobs.

When I spotted last week's obituary for Suzanne Hanna, it immediately took me back to my initial weeks as SooToday's founding reporter/editor in 2002, and the closest Dick ever came to ordering me to pull down a published story.

Suzanne's name is almost synonymous with the Sault Ste. Marie Horticultural Society.

She was also one of SooToday/Village Media's earliest columnists.

Among many other accomplishments, Suzanne played a major role in attracting the Ontario Horticultural Association's 96th annual provincial conference to the Sault in June, 2002.

It's traditional for the provincial group to provide a small token of appreciation to cities that host its gatherings.

Suzanne's advice was sought.

She suggested a hackberry tree might be fitting.

Hackberries are hard to grow this far north.

They are widespread in the United States but in Canada are largely confined to Ontario's Carolinian Zone – that part of the province south of Highway 401.

A hackberry tree had once been successfully planted in the arboretum behind the Great Lakes Forestry Centre, but it died after it was transplanted to make room for a road.

So, a week before the big conference at what was then the Best Western on Great Northern Road, I was invited to photograph the planting of a new, Ontario Horticultural Society-donated hackberry tree in the arboretum.

As I recall, SooToday was the only media outlet that came out for the planting.

I took a nice picture with my 75 dot-per-inch Sony Mavica digital camera and posted it proudly on SooToday.

The problem was my headline.

Hackberry trees have lots of other names, including Celtis occidentalis, hagberries and sugarberries.

For my headline, I unwisely chose another popular name, one that Suzanne Hanna had never heard before, despite her encyclopedic knowledge of the plant world.

"Please don't take this personally, Sault Ste. Marie, but Ontario's horticulturalists have just presented you with a bastard elm tree," I wrote.

Other juicy bastard elm tidbits in my coverage included:

• many bastard elms suffer from a fungus infection that produces thick clusters of twigs called 'witch's brooms'

• bastard elms are known for their ability to tolerate a wide variety of soil types, but they particularly like places where limestone bedrock is either exposed or near the surface

• they are considered a member of the elm family, but are nonetheless resistant to Dutch Elm disease

• the fruit looks like purple cherries, is widely eaten by robins, pheasants, wild turkeys and other birds, and was used by the Dakota Indians to flavour meat

• bastard elm wood is soft and weak

• an 1858 collapse of a railroad bridge near Utica, New York was blamed on the use of hackberry instead of common elm, which looks remarkably similar

Well, word soon reached me that some folk in the Ontario Horticultural Society weren't amused at my soft, weak, hackberry journalism.

I didn't hear a peep from Suzanne Hanna, though.

Suzanne's sense of humour was similar in many ways to my own.

At first, Dick Peplow wasn't too concerned, either.

But as the conference's opening date approached, Dick was hearing more complaints.

You need to know that Dick would never order me to kill a published story.

But on this occasion, he told me he was seriously considering doing that.

Well, he didn't follow through.

The controversy blew over and any time I encountered Suzanne Hanna over the 19 years since then, we shared a laugh over the infamous bastard elm story.

Suzanne's tireless voluntarism, extensive knowledge and sense of humour gained her countless friends and admiration throughout the OHA's District 13.

An Associated Press article published in April talked about her efforts to help fellow gardeners access seeds during a pandemic that choked off many supply chains.

"Lately, Hanna has been like the Easter Bunny, only with seeds," AP correspondent John Raby wrote.

"She's been conducting what she calls 'drive-by dropoffs, where we throw out plastic bags full of seeds and encourage people to do what they can.'"

On the Sault Ste. Marie Horticultural Society Facebook page, Loni Pierce proclaimed: "Her limitless passion for the society, her cheeky smile, her wealth of knowledge and goodwill to share it – these are just a few of the things I will miss."

Meanwhile, I learned two takeaways from the reaction to my headline:

• don't needlessly offend distinguished visitors who are spending big money for food, lodging and convention facilities in your city

• by all means possible, avoid infuriating normally mild-mannered people who sharpen their shovels and have wheelbarrows and scary long-handled lopping shears. Take my word for it: horticulturalists are not soft targets!