LETTER: Standing up for the ‘tiny forest’ in South Surrey’s Ocean Park
Published 7:00 am Sunday, March 15, 2026
Editor,
Dear Tiny Forest in Ocean Park (128 Street and 24 Avenue):
You don’t seem like much. Once a neighbour’s private paradise, I have never even walked through you. But you are a part of this community. Your familiar cozy darkness beckons us to enter, cool vapour. Like my own lungs, I take you for granted.
Now, a threat lingers over your precious boughs. You emanate peace, bestow life, trap carbon, exude oxygen; and what do we give you back? Slaughter and townhouses.
When I see the 2050 community plan for higher-density living, I shudder. Where once there were small homes with many trees, there are now monster houses, ego palaces with none, row-houses with none, quad-plexes with none.
Surrey is a big city with many areas that could sustain higher density. Ocean Park and Crescent Beach are unique and should be preserved. Let us not discuss zoning. Let us discuss preservation and the kinship we need with every tree to survive.
So dear Tiny Forest, as you cuddle in close to children as they walk home from school; as you embrace the eagles that perch in your boughs; and as you fill my heart and my lungs with joy and oxygen, I pray that politicians and developers will hear the people as they cry out for your protection. Seems to me we could zone ourselves right out existence.
You cannot speak, so I must speak for you.
Love Leslee Gawthrop, librarian for kids, and trees.
Leslee Gawthrop, Surrey