Grade 6 students from Rancheview School were out planting trees this morning at the pond across form St. Timothy's High School to celebrate their successful lobbying of Cochrane town council.

The class successfully convinced town council to:

1. To recognize the first Friday of every June, Town Arbour Day.

2. To make the White Spruce the official tree of Cochrane.

3. To have the Cochrane Parks Dept. help to find a spot where the students could safely plant trees.

"Mr. Belsey, I think he's done a good job of taking class studies and transforming that into real-world teaching kids about how they can impact their lives and their world around them through municipal government and asking for change," said Mayor Jeff Genung, who attended the tree planting to mark the occasion and help plant the trees.

The event was also attended by Howard Pruden, of Spray Lake Sawmills, who supplied the kids with saplings, as well as to give a quick lesson on why it's important to continue to plant more trees, and how to properly plant them.

The students were extremely excited to take part in the tree planting, going by their slogan "Trees Bring Joy". Some of them shared their favorite things they learned about trees.

Ashley says, "We learn kind of about like how the trees are like they can be connected when they're like when they're born, and if you give one tree water and they're connected by roots, the other it transfers through the roots to the other tree. So if you only water one tree and it's connected, then it gets two trees watered."

Reid says, "They bring us lots of joy. That it's very difficult to plant them, but I think it's going to be worth it because in a couple of years there's going to be a new forest around here."

Pavelle says, "I think my friend Ashley already said this but If there's two trees and you water one and then or then it will transfer its water to the other tree and it will help the other one grow as well."

Raef says, "like how trees can like, talk to each other through like the roots and stuff. That's probably my favorite part."

Their teacher Bill Belsey says the idea came from science class.

"The really excellent science curriculum that we currently have includes at the grade 6 level a big portion about trees of Alberta...We just went really deep in learning about trees in every way we could, and kids at this age are concerned for their future because the environment is under great stress and there's a lot of issues that even at their young age they care about because this is their future."

He said it came to the point where the students asked what they could do to help. So, they did a bit more research and they found out that in some places, like the United States, they have an Arbour Day to encourage people to plant trees. They also found out that Cochrane doesn't have an official tree. This lead them to asking if town council would support a town Arbour Day.

After this, the next step for the students was to find a suitable tree to try and make the official tree of Cochrane.

"We found out that the beautiful old grandfather tree which was over 300 years old, that we often hike to as a class and go there as so do many other Cochranites. That tree is a white spruce tree, and then we contacted Mr. Howard Pruden from Spray Lake Sawmills and he said yep, the white spruce tree is native to this area. It's a fantastic tree, beautiful, hardy, It does well here and so we thought, OK, maybe the next thing is we could ask the town council is, would they actually adopt and recognize an official tree of Cochrane being the white spruce tree, among which is the grandfather tree." says Belsey.

The final step was to pitch the idea to town council in march, and lobby them to support the initiative.

"The kids made that presentation very professional. They were all dressed up nicely. They did an awesome job and they took it. The kids answered all the counselors' questions and then they took it under advisement and then a month later they had a follow-up Council meeting where the counselors debated it a bit more, and they when they went to vote, they voted on the three separate proposals and all each proposal was voted and supported unanimously by the mayor and the Council. And so that led to this day." says Belsey.

Mayor Genung says that the plan put in place by the class made it an easy call for town council.

"I think it was pretty impactful for us to be able to do something seemingly simple from the Council point of view, but to actually have that transform into an urban forest here one day, it's pretty cool."

Belsey is grateful for all the help making this happen and says that this one of his proudest moments of his nearly 40 years in teaching.

"I just couldn't be more proud of them, and I'm so grateful at the town of Cochrane staff, the park staff has supported the kids. I'm grateful to Spray Lake sawmills for coming out and donating the saplings, but also teaching the kids, mentoring them, and showing them how to do this the right way.

"There's just so much good that is coming out of this morning... I think I've done some good things in my career, but this may be right near the very top of them because this is kids having their voices heard having their ideas taken seriously and actually making a difference and seeing their ideas come to fruition on an amazing day like this."

Belsey says that he and his class hopes that the tree planting goes beyond this one day and grows.

"We're hoping that this isn't just about our class. Our hope is that next year in the spring all the schools in Cochrane could have classes plant trees, and the town would help us find other places for other classes to join us and we could find other places to plant."

Lastly Belsey says that many different seeds were planted today.

"There's a saying in teaching that teachers plant seeds. You know, for trees that grow and will create shade that we may never sit under so you know, I'm hoping that we're planting all kinds of seeds, both physically, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally. There's just so many seeds that are being planted here this morning and I couldn't be prouder."