Scenic French canal losing its shade trees

For nearly 200 years, the plane trees have stood sentry over the Canal du Midi. Some rise ramrod-straight and proud over Europe’s oldest man-made waterway. Others lean like creaky old men, forming an impenetrable canopy over the dappled, barely moving water below.

Their shade protects travelers from the relentless Midi sun. Their roots hold up the canal’s banks. Their hardy leaves sink to the bottom and stop the water from seeping into the soil. Perhaps just as important, they transform a utilitarian artery into a thing of natural beauty.

The trees make stretches of the 155-mile canal in southeastern France so picturesque that in declaring it a World Heritage Site, UNESCO said it was not only “one of the most remarkable feats of civil engineering in modern times,” but a “work of art.”

Now, however, the canal’s 42,000 plane trees are under threat. A fungus — allegedly introduced by U.S. servicemen carrying munitions boxes made of diseased sycamore during World War II — is attacking the trees.

For five years, the blight has spread along the waterway, defying attempts to cure or control it. Specialists say it is almost inevitable that all the planes will have to be chopped down, burned and replaced over the next 20 years.

Sitting in his neat, airy office near the banks of the canal in Toulouse, where it starts, Jacques Noisette acknowledges the prospect is heartbreaking.

“When I was told we would have to cut down the trees, I was sick to the heart and sick to the stomach,” says Noisette, a spokesman and historian for Voies Navigables de France, the government body that runs the canal, for 21 years. “This isn’t like working on a road or a motorway. This is our canal; we feel very strongly about it and hold it in very great affection.”

It was just over a mile upstream in Toulouse in January 1667 that the first of an estimated 250 million cubic feet of earth and rubble were dug out to create the celebrated waterway.

Today, flanked by the busy roads, hotels and housing developments of Toulouse, the sunken towpath with its sheltering planes and heavy whiff of jasmine harks back to a peaceful, slower age. Water tumbling through the locks drowns out the relentless drone of traffic.

From Toulouse the canal meanders in a southeasterly direction through the historic towns of Castelnaudary, Carcassonne, Beziers and Agde, to the Thau lagoon and the Mediterranean port of Sete.

The idea of creating a waterway as a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, linking up originally with the River Garonne and, later, the Canal de Garonne, was a Holy Grail for successive French rulers since Roman times.

The route overland was slow, uncomfortable and riddled with bandits. The alternative was a 1,860-mile, one-month voyage by sea around the hostile Spanish coast, dodging storms and pirates.

In 1516, King Francois I brought Leonardo da Vinci to France to survey a possible route, but even the great Renaissance master was unable to solve the fundamental problem of finding a permanent source of water.

Finally, in 1654, wealthy salt tax collector Pierre-Paul Riquet drew up a plan to channel mountain streams into a reservoir to feed the dreamed-of canal.

He was given royal assent in 1666, and work began on the extraordinary canal that nobody believed possible. Riquet was said to be stubborn, solitary and tenacious, and so he proved, creating bridges, aqueducts and tunnels of remarkable scale and engineering complexity to go over, under or through obstacles.

The finished waterway, boasting 91 locks, 126 bridges, six dams and 55 viaducts along with tunnels and aqueducts, is astonishing even by modern standards.

The French military hero Marechal Vauban, architect of many of France’s most noteworthy 17th century forts and fortifications, described the Canal du Midi as “without doubt the most beautiful and most noble construction of its kind ever undertaken.” He added: “I would have preferred to have created it than all that I have done and all that I will do.”

In its citation, UNESCO said the canal had “provided the model for the flowering of technology that led directly to the Industrial Revolution and the modern technological age.”

As the planes flourished, they became an integral part of the canal’s beauty. The waterway was finally closed to commercial transport in the 1980s and became a tourist attraction, drawing an estimated 2 million visitors a year.

In a world obsessed with speed and pressed for time, traveling down the canal at a sedate 5 mph is an exercise in enforced tranquillity. The technical splendor of bridges, locks and tunnels, and the historical wonder of medieval fortifications and Roman towns are interspersed with stretches of unspoiled pastoral beauty.

In 2006, specialists concerned about a growing number of sick trees identified the culprit: the fungus Ceratocystis platani. Noisette says they concluded it had come from American munitions boxes in the 1940s and was probably spread by careless boat users bumping into trees or tying mooring ropes to them.

About 2,500 trees have been felled and replaced with disease-resistant planes. Tree specialists have told the canal authority that the remaining 40,000 will need to be destroyed over the next 20 years — at an estimated cost of more than $300 million.

Toulouse-born Laurence Pourquier, 36, grew up on the canal, which her late parents used to transport wine and other goods until the 1980s.

“The Canal du Midi is part of my life,” she says, her voice hesitant and emotional. “The idea of cutting down the trees is like cutting off part of myself.

“I know they say they’ll replant them, but I won’t be around to see them grow back to how they are now, and that saddens me.”

Christian Moutous, 51, runs a cruise boat on the canal at Toulouse. He thinks the sick plane trees should be replaced with other varieties. “The problem is, most other trees grow more slowly than planes and in this 21st century we want everything now, including 20-foot-tall trees,” he says.

As he sits sipping coffee on his boat on a sunny summer afternoon, the passing traffic on the towpath is mostly joggers, cyclists and grandmothers pushing strollers. Tourists and locals sit on wooden benches in the shade of the planes.

“The canal is part of our heritage, and as with any heritage we are very attached to it,” Moutous says.

He adds mischievously, “It’s said the American soldiers brought the disease here, but hey, let’s not forget we were happy enough to see them at the time.”

A few days later, just after sunrise on a sunny August holiday, more than 200 rowers gather on the banks of the Canal du Midi in Toulouse to row about 125 miles to Beziers, near where it joins the Mediterranean coast.

As he pushes off from the tree-lined bank, Alain Girard says descending the canal by boat is “one of life’s real pleasures.

“The countryside is beautiful and changes as you go. But without the plane trees and the shade they cast, it would be far too hot.”

Noisette is there to see the rowers off. He says the banks of the Canal du Midi will never be left “naked” and insists the destruction of trees will be carried out gradually, with the pace depending on how quickly the fungus spreads.

“The canal is a wonder of the world, but it is not like a pyramid. It is a living thing,” he says. “The way I see it, the trees are like our grandparents. Some get sick, but actually they are all coming to the end of their lives, and the new trees are like grandchildren and great-grandchildren, coming through to take their place.

“I am determined they will be restored for the future, so the canal retains its charm for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I don’t want them saying: ‘Why didn’t they do something?’”

Willsher is a Times special correspondent.