The History of Shaking The Tree

Joyce Burnell and the (then) 250-year old Woodlands White Oak

A round four years ago, the original writers group I was a part of us was talking about putting a website together to showcase some of our writing. Our group  met monthly, and our meetings were hosted by a different member of the group each month.

I was on my way to what had become our annual Christmas get-to-together where our gracious host would cook an amazing feast that had us longing for the next time our watering mouths would find their place at the table of her and her partners beautiful escarpment-backing home.

Someone at work had leant me a mixed cd, which I decided to listen to on the way to this particular mid-December meeting. It just so happened, that the first track was a live version of Peter Gabriel’s song Shaking The Tree. I listened to that tune probably three or four times before I arrived at my destination and over dinner, I made the recommendation that we consider ‘Shaking The Tree’ as the name of our site.

I put a few concept drawings together and after some discussion, our group adopted ‘Shaking The Tree’ as the new name for our new website.

With family and work commitments, it wasn’t long after we started our discussions about creating our own place on the web, that slowly members started to leave the group, and ‘Shaking The Tree’ would never see the light of day. I had however, already purchased the URL ‘shakingthetree.ca’ shortly after our writers group decided on the name of our site, and a few years later, I still owned the rights to that web URL. ‘Just incase I ever want to use it for something’, I thought.

In 2008, this article appeared in the Toronto Star, and immediately I knew that the images I used on my site would be insipred by that old oak tree that the late Joyce Burnell fought so hard to save. Here is a link to the complete history of Joyce’s fight to save the 250 year old tree.

I have now captured this famous tree through all four seasons. I have only edited the late fall shot that appears on the main page of this website, as it takes a bit of editing to remove unwanted items such as hydro lines, but hopefully in the coming months I can share the full beauty of this very special tree with all of you.

Peter  Gabriel   -   “Shaking  The  Tree”  from  the  1993  Secret  World  Tour

The song that originally inspired this site, Shaking The Tree (view lyrics here), is about woman’s rights in Africa, and was co-written with Senegalese singer, songwriter Youssou N’Dour. (as a side note, that is the very beautiful, extremely talented, voice of Paula Cole singing backing vocals and harmony in this video)

Although this site is not about woman’s rights per say, I believe there is meaning behind everything, including why this song in particular, was the inspiration for what this site is becoming.

So what does ‘Shaking The Tree dot ca’ stand for? I am not sure I have figured that out myself, so for now, it is simply a blog about life. This one-time shot at life, and all of the beautiful souls (both man and creature), that share our lifes path with us.

In Closing and with keeping with the ‘woman’s rights’ theme, I thought I would also include reference to a project co-founded by Peter Gabriel’s daughter, Anna Gabriel, entitled The Voice Project, which uses  the power of music to cure a very real, and a very serious problem. Here is a link to the Vimeo page as well.