It was supposed to be a Christmas ornaments purge for Christine Hummel of Powassan.
However, the purge never happened and what grew in its place was an eye-catching tradition in the small northern Ontario community.
It was 2019 when Hummel was going through her Christmas closet and decided she had too many holiday season ornaments. Hummel put 36 ornaments in a box, intending to donate them.
“But then I thought, I’m going to decorate a random Charlie Brown tree.”
Hummel needed an outdoor tree in a relatively high-visibility area.
She looked around and, down a small embankment next to the car park at Highway 11 north ramp to North Bay, Hummel found her tree. Six years ago, the tree was straggly — about eight feet tall — and Hummel placed the 36 ornaments on it, along with some tinsel.
What happened next was unexpected.
“People started to add to it on their own,” Hummel said.
And add to it residents did, to the point that this year, the Charlie Brown tree, which has flourished and has many more branches, supports 527 various ornaments.
“People came to expect it and they look forward to the decorations going up,” Hummel said, who is also known as the Christmas Elf by some locals.
The community Christmas tree is now about 15 feet tall.
Hummel’s daughter Maggie helped mom this year with the decorations and stood on an eight-foot ladder on her tippy toes to place the star on top.
Hummel says when she and her daughter were decorating the tree, “motorists honked their horns and waved” at them.
Pictures of the finished work can be found on the What’s Happening Powassan? Facebook page, which has so far garnered nearly 400 likes and more than 70 comments.
The Christmas tree attracts a lot of attention.
Hummel says families and friends go to the site and have their picture taken, and sometimes the tree is used as a means to help families in need.
She says if they need a few ornaments, community members can help themselves.
Hummel adds other community members go above and beyond. “Some people have put small toys in Ziplock bags under the tree and people in need can pick them up for their children,” she said.
When community residents add to the tree, they run the gamut with some placing wreaths on the tree, some placing small toys — there’s even a polar bear ornament, plus memorial baubles.
“One woman put an ornament on it in memory of her husband,” Hummel said.
One of the hanging ornaments honours the memory of Elvin Smith. His first name is so similar to the King of Rock and Roll’s name that everyone called Smith “Elvis.”
Smith was a client of Almaguin Highlands Community Living, and Hummel remembers him as a cheerful person who interacted well with the public.
“He would never ask for money,” she said. “But he’d always say ‘I’ll put a million dollars in your account if you buy me a cup of coffee.’”
A resident etched Smith’s likeness on an ornament that is displayed on the tree.
During 2023, the community Christmas tree nearly didn’t get decorated because Hummel was diagnosed with lung cancer. The cancerous lung was removed, which was followed by four rounds of chemotherapy.
Hummel was on her second chemo treatment when it was that time of year to decorate the tree; however, the treatments sapped her strength.
Only family members and close friends knew about her diagnosis. Fortunately, one of those friends is Doug Thompson, her neighbour.
Hummel said decorating the tree had become such a quick tradition that she felt she was letting the community down by not putting the decorations up. But she was in no shape to continue the tradition for that one year.
“Doug called one day and I was overloaded with compassion,” Hummel said when Thompson said he would make sure the community tree was dressed up. “It’s nice that people feel that way about you that they’re willing to help.”
Thompson characterized Hummel as an “absolutely great neighbour” and that the Christmas tree was “something near and dear to her.”
“I saw that it needed to continue,” Thompson said. “If she couldn’t do it, we needed to step up and help her out.”
Thompson is the president of the Powassan Minor Hockey Association and used his position to make sure that the Charlie Brown Christmas tree was decorated and the tradition wasn’t broken.
He got several hockey players from the Powassan Voodoos and Powassan Hawks, including a couple of Voodoos players he billets, plus a few parents, and on a Sunday afternoon, last Dec. 10, about 30 people descended at the site to do what Hummel was unable to do.
One of Thompson’s boys works for the roofing company J.G. Fitzgerald and Sons of North Bay and when Thompson explained what the community was attempting, the business responded with several pieces of equipment, including a generator to heat up some hot chocolate.
Someone also brought cookies and doughnuts for the younger children.
After picking up the decorations from Hummel’s home, the makeshift work crew had the tree fully decorated in one hour. Hummel could see the tree from her home and watched the progress. When it was decorated, she walked to the site.
“She was in tears,” Thompson said, adding Hummel was amazed at how quickly many people stepped up to help her.
Thompson took her reaction in stride. “It’s a small town,” he said.
“We’re all supposed to try and be here for each other. So, it’s times like these when someone can’t do something that you help out.”
During this period, Hummel’s daughter was studying biomedical science at Toronto’s York University and heard what the Thompson group had done. “This was very sentimental to me,” said Maggie Hummel.
“Doug is a very kind man. My hands were tied, so I couldn’t help. But there were so many people in the community who did help. That’s what drew me to come back to a small town. You don’t see this in a large city.”
Hummel is now enrolled in the Bachelor of Science psychology program at Nipissing University, hoping to attend the Northern Ontario School of Medicine after she graduates.
Hummel enjoyed helping her mom out with the tree this year and plans to help in future years. In all the time the tree has been decorated, both women have noticed it’s never been vandalized or the object of mischief.
There are other criminal incidents in the town, but, Maggie Hummel says, “The tree has remained untouched.”
The ornaments will stay in place until January when Hummel will take them down and let them dry. She’ll repair the damaged pieces, and then it’s back into their tote boxes until the following Christmas.
Hummel regularly prunes the tree and has plans next fall to cut back some of the brush surrounding it.
At one point, she seriously considered finding another tree, but that notion was quickly squelched by community members. “People said ‘no’ because everyone knows where the community tree is,” Hummel said. “They want it to stay where it is.”
Motorists northbound on Highway 11 have a clear view of the tree just before the Clark Street overpass.
Hummel says on sunny days, the ornaments “glisten and shine.” Soon, Hummel plans to get small solar-powered lights she can wrap around the tree so that it lights up at night.
The Powassan ritual to decorate the tree has become contagious in nearby Chisholm Township.
Aware of what Hummel had started, Chisholm residents have now duplicated the act by creating their own community Christmas tree.
Seeing how the community stepped up last year and how residents like and love the Christmas tree, Hummel says she plans to keep decorating her Charlie Brown tree for years to come.
“I can’t stop now, it would disappoint too many people,” Hummel said.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Almaguin News. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
