Park board commissioner Aaron Jasper made it clear during a meeting with the Stanley Park Hollow Tree Conservation Society last week that he wouldn't accept any proposal that would turn Vancouver's famed 1,000-year-old red cedar into a monstrosity.
"I said I want to be very clear in my mind that you're not turning this into a Franken-tree, that this will still be a tree," Mr. Jasper said.
He left the meeting satisfied the result will be far from a horror.
"Unless someone really looks closely and gets in there and walks around, people will not even know that this tree has had work done on it," Mr. Jasper said.
The park board is to meet today to decide the fate of the long-dead tree, which sits beside a winding road through Stanley Park and is about six metres across.
Visitors from around the world have posed in front of it for more than a century.
The tree, held upright by a growing mess of metal braces and cables, further deteriorated when a windstorm battered the city in December of 2006, knocking down 10,000 other trees in the park.
The storm made the tree's precarious tilt even worse. Fearing it posed a danger to visitors, the park board fenced it off and voted last March to cut it down.
The board confirmed its decision three months later, but agreed in July to delay taking the tree down while an independent engineering firm examined other options.
Today, the board is to consider recommendations from park staff that a design to realign and stabilize the tree be approved, and that the Hollow Tree Society be encouraged to continue its private fundraising for the project. The group has collected $54,000 to date.
"I think it's safe to say we will be supporting staff recommendations," Mr. Jasper said.
That news was welcomed by the society's Bruce Macdonald.
"When you go anywhere in the world, what you want to see is what's unique about a place. And when you live in a city like Vancouver, what makes you proudest of your city is what's unique about it," he said.
Not everyone shares Mr. Macdonald's view. In a city with a vast array of opinions on issues such as homelessness and the 2010 Olympics, what to do with the hollow tree has spurred its share of debate.
"There is a group out there that supports the idea that it should basically wither away," said park board chairman Raj Hundal. " 'No money or energy should be put to this. Let it just decompose.' "
He added that although he respects that view, he doesn't subscribe to it.
"I think it's actually a place that people go and visit. It's in Stanley Park, which is one of our jewels in the city. It definitely has a lot of prominence,"
Mr. Macdonald's message to those who oppose the tree's restoration - eco-fundamentalists, as he calls them - is a bit more blunt.
"Let us have one dead stump so we can at least realize the fantastic trees that grew here and the thing that originally drew people to this city," he said.
Mr. Macdonald said the opinion that the tree should not be interfered with is more than four decades too late. "The park board put steel braces in it in 1965. It's been artificially interfered with for a long, long time."
The first step in the restoration process is already complete; the tree has been temporarily stabilized. The next move is to install jacking equipment. Once the jacks are in place, they will be used to put the tree back into its original vertical position.
When the tree has been straightened, its foundation will be permanently stabilized with steel micropiles.
The project is expected to cost a total of $215,000, including analysis, design, on-site and off-site professional services, site labour, materials and a contingency fund.
Of that amount, $155,000 has been covered by in-kind donations and cash donations. That leaves the Hollow Tree Society just $6,000 shy of its fundraising goal.