Legendary “spirit tree” remnant has new home

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This article was published 19/12/2021 (1060 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Part of the carved “spirit tree” that stood majestically in the Bois-des-Esprits forest in Royalwood for the best part of two decades has a new home at the Musée de Saint-Boniface Museum.

According to a joint news release from the museum and Save Our Seine, the famed tree known as Woody-Mhitik was carved from the base of an elm tree — its lower trunk was stripped and salvaged after its crown was removed because of Dutch elm disease in 2004.  

Local carvers Walter Mirosh and Robert Leclair transformed the tree into two spirits — one looking up into the Bois-des-Esprits’ leafy canopy, and the other facing an oxbow of the nearby Seine River. Time finally caught up with the legendary tree this past summer.

The museum (494 Tache Ave.) is now exhibiting Woody-Mhitik’s oxbow face in its chapel room, along with interpretive signage that accompanied the sculpture in its original location in the forest. Organizers say the tree succumbed to old age and crumbled to the ground in August, and although the canopy was beyond salvation, longtime SOS supporter and former board member Marcel Ritchot retrieved and restored the oxbow face.