New York deprived of its Montreal Christmas connection

In the streets of Manhattan, you can buy habichuelas con dulce from a Dominican, kebab from an Egyptian and… Christmas trees from a Quebecker.

Apparently, a number of people from Quebec travel to New York every December to sell Christmas trees grown in farms in the Eastern Townships. One of the more famous of these tree vendors is Daniel Lemay, a Montreal graphic designer who takes a month off every year to work in New York. He gained notoriety for building a makeshift dwelling on Second Avenue in the East Village, across from St. Mark’s in the Bowery, where Lemay sells his trees. In 2004, the New York Times’ real estate section described it as “a 8-by-5-foot duplex hut, 10 feet high, made from quarter-inch plywood and decorated with birch saplings, French doors, plexiglass windows, floodlights, Christmas wreaths, a green plastic storm fence and a complex rig of colored lights.”

Set beneath a street light on Second Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets and looking toward St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery Church, Mr. Lemay’s temporary home, or abre [sic], as he calls it, is both office and shelter, the hub of his Christmas tree business, which he runs until midnight on Dec. 24.

In contrast to his competitors, most of whom are merely camping – shacked up in R.V.’s, pickup trucks and vans around the city – Mr. Lemay’s home this month displays all the folksy, architectural elan of a hand-built Buckminster Fuller dome or a tricked-out yurt. (Even his partner, Bart Miazga, is sleeping in a van in front of the schoolyard at Mary Help of Christians Church around the corner on First Avenue.)

St. Mark’s is Mr. Lemay’s landlord, to whom he and Mr. Miazga pay 10 percent of their roughly $30,000 in sales. The church provides power, a washroom and a veneer of good works – added value for an enterprise that runs on holiday spirits.

Combining street theater with an Outward Bound leader’s manifesto – respect the land, make do with what’s on hand, be neat – Mr. Lemay, though tied to his plywood universe like a joey to his mother’s pouch, is clearly having a glorious time. Displaying a dizzying array of sweater fashion, he’s the mayor of Abe Lebewohl Park in front of the church- a 0.155-acre, cobblestoned triangular park, named for the late proprietor of the Second Avenue Deli – happily expounding on the difference between a balsam and a Douglas fir, the economy and Cadillac models of his product. He will hurl children happily into the tops of trees stacked along the iron gates of the churchyard, or saw off a stump to point out the growth rings to an 8-year-old.

Lemay has become a well-known downtown character, someone who visits New York for “the social fix” and “to be on the corner where everything happens before your eyes,” as he told New York Magazine in 2006. (“Why is every tree seller in New York French-Canadian?” the magazine asked Lemay. “I believe they hire us because we have an accent, and this gives an exotic taste to the Christmas tree. Since we come from a colder environment, we can sustain the weather easier,” he answered). I think most of us could understand that. If I had a chance to live in the East Village for a month (even in a plywood shack), with New York’s streetlife to entertain me, I’d certainly take it.

Unfortunately, Lemay won’t be returning to Manhattan this year. The New York Times reported last Sunday that he has been denied entry to the United States. Apparently, despite seeing no problem with his activities for the past ten years, US Customs has decided that Lemay shouldn’t be allowed to sell Christmas trees on Second Avenue.

On Nov. 28, Mr. Lemay was stopped at the border in Beecher Falls, Vt., and denied entry into the United States. He was in his truck, Mr. Lemay said later, with a few trees and treetops (his full harvest of about 1,000 trees was to follow a day or two later) and his assistant for the season, Justin Tremblay.

Mr. Lemay said he had explained his yearly mission to the border officers, “but it was no, no all the way.”

Undaunted, Mr. Lemay and Mr. Tremblay returned the next day, to the same chorus of noes and an officer, said Mr. Lemay, brandishing a 2004 article from The New York Times about Mr. Lemay’s tree business.

“‘You are doing jobs that U.S. citizens could do,’ he told me,” Mr. Lemay recalled heatedly.

Last week, Ted Woo, chief of public affairs for the Boston office of Customs and Border Protection, said that privacy laws kept him from discussing individual cases. What he could address, he said, was the general notion of a Canadian selling Christmas trees. “Someone who is not a resident of the United States,” Mr. Woo said, “cannot bring in Christmas trees and sell them.”

Photos: New York Times