The Vancouver Sun Weekend Review section on December 31, 2011 featured a full-page photo by Ric Ernst of what looks like a street canopy of Red Maples in glorious autumn colour, caption: "Benny Wang takes a photograph of Blanca Chow in the 2600-block of Cambridge Street in Vancouver in late October". The Vancouver Sun's website cut Benny and Blanca out of the photo (but left their names in the title), so it looks kind of pointless, but the full photo is here on the News Photographers Association of Canada website. The Sun used as a headline "The year's last, loveliest smile", a reference to William Cullen Bryant Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile, but didn't cite the reference. The phrase got about 148,000 hits on google (bloggers, photo galleries), with most people crediting Bryant, but I'm not finding the poem. From goodreads.com: "William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post." He was born in 1878. I don't see this street listed under maples in Straley's Trees of Vancouver, so maybe I'm totally wrong about these trees, and this posting belongs elsewhere.
Yes, looks quite like a planting of Acer rubrum - including the variation in fall leaf coloring among different seedlings seen down here.
