Nicole Robert does not usually work out of Ottawa's City Hall, but now she is hunched over on the floor next to security, writing code on her laptop. Robert does not work for the city — she is a statistical analyst for the Medical Council of Canada. On a rainy morning on June 10, she sits on the tile floor, sandwiched between three handmade signs that her nine-year-old son made. One of them reads: “Single mom forced to work from City Hall to save our home.”
She stops to pick up a phone call from her son’s school about a pizza delivery just as a group of visitors stops to photograph her. If one of these curious passersby were to ask, Robert would say she is at this makeshift office because it is the only way she thinks the city will listen to her.
Foundation Damage from City Trees
Shortly after purchasing her Copeland Park home in 2022, Robert found out that the roots of two city trees were damaging its foundation. At first, she was sure it would be straightforward to remove the trees, since the red brick house she had bought for her and her son was visibly cracking and crumbling, and a number of her neighbours’ homes were, too. But the city’s tree protection bylaw from 2021 complicates this, Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo says.
“A recent staff report noted that in a lot of parts of the city, tree canopy had decreased. So it seeks to advance some of those goals in protecting tree canopy,” Lo says about why Ottawa residents going to the city to deal with tree root damage often receive unfavourable responses.
Residents Face High Costs
Though numerous homes in Robert’s area and Lo’s ward are experiencing foundation damage from city tree roots, its restrictive bylaw does not serve the interests of the residents, who spend upwards of $100,000 in repair and damage costs to their houses, Lo says. Lo already managed to get the city to look at damage in his ward as a single case. But in Nepean, Robert is still waiting.
The Sneaky Nature of Maple Trees
Sugar and red maple trees, especially those planted when Robert’s Copeland Park house was built in the early 1960s, are massive and beautiful. Sugar maples are Canada’s national tree, according to the Government of Ontario website. But they can also be insidious and greedy.
Gerry Vlug, an arborist at the tree service company ArborXpert, says that in dry years (like 2025), trees require so much water that they spread way out to search for it. “The way that trees do damage to foundations is that they go looking for more water because it is drier, and they find water deeper down, near the foundation. They take that water, meaning the sand and soil around the house loses moisture, becomes lesser, and the house sinks,” Vlug says, adding that, while all trees can do this, there are a lot of maple trees in Ottawa.
