Millar Western Christmas tree lights up Edmonton!
A little bit of Whitecourt has made its way to Edmonton to light up the holiday season. That’s if you could call a towering 70-ft, 8,000-lb white spruce a “little bit”!
For the 10th consecutive year, Millar Western has supplied the tree that forms the centerpiece of Christmas and seasonal holiday celebrations in downtown Edmonton. At the “Christmas on the Square Holiday Light-Up” event, held November 15, a huge crowd was on hand as Mayor Don Iveson presided over the lighting of the massive tree.
For our company, the work began well before the ceremony. Finding a huge, perfectly shaped tree, then felling, wrapping, loading and hauling it in pristine shape from Whitecourt to downtown Edmonton, is a major undertaking. Each year, this feat has been managed by Millar Western forester (and master Christmas tree wrangler) Max Matthews. Max has been assisted by dedicated teams of company woodlands staff, who enjoy the early opportunity to get into the Christmas spirit. He has also worked closely with Shawn Prokipchuk of Ron Prokipchuk Trucking Ltd., whose skilled hand on the crane controls has made a near-impossible task – gently lifting and placing a 4-ton tree — look easy. This year, “the hardest part was the last few blocks in the city, because of all the construction barriers,” joked Max, as he jumped from his truck at 1 am on Friday November 7, to oversee installation of the 2014 tree into its massive concrete stand in Churchill Square.
Decorated with 14,000 LED lights, sparklers and snow globes, the tree was met with boisterous cheers by the crowd of an estimated 10,000 people who gathered on the square for the light-up ceremony. Equally impressed was Mayor Iveson, who congratulated Max and Millar Western for their commitment to bringing a “little bit” of the natural beauty of Whitecourt’s forests to Edmonton.