A shoot and a stump are all what’s been left of what was a 65- foot mature Linden tree in the front yard of Brad and Elayne Rix.
A few feet away, there’s another stump of what was a large Horse Chestnut tree.
“It’s devastating,” Brad Rix said.
Both were pruned by Fortis BC in the fall of 2023 as branches were perilously close to power lines.
“They cut over two-thirds of the Linden,” Rix said.
Rix said he had no choice but to finish the job himself and remove the trees completely.
“It was horrible to look at,” he said. “The trees don’t even look like trees anymore.”
While Rix, a former Fortis lineman himself, knows all about tree safety around powerlines, it’s the way the power giant goes about it that has prompted him and his wife to take legal action.
The couple filed a claim in small claims court on Feb. 25 naming Fortis and a local tree company as the defendants.
They are are seeking $35,000 in compensation for all the associated out-of-pocket expenses.
“We’ve had estimates on what the value of the trees were before they were cut by a professional arborist….there was the cost of the trees, there was the cost of the removal totally, because we couldn’t look at what they’ve done,” Rix said.
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“There are costs pending because of irrigation now because we don’t have that canopy more so there will be landscaping costs added to that as well.”
In addition, the couple hopes the legal action prompts better communication with homeowners and more thoughtful trimming practices.
“They didn’t have to do that,” Rix said.
Last spring, another Kelowna resident, Giulio Di Palma, came home to find his Spruce tree half gone.
“I was shocked,” Di Palma said in May of 2024. “Disappointment, upset, violated.”
A few blocks away, Gordy Charles had a similar experience.
Charles was away on vacation and came home to find almost two handful of his trees trimmed.
“It just makes me feel sick,” Charles told Global News last spring. “The trees have been brutalized.”
In the wake of the criticism, Fortis stated it would conduct an internal review of its trimming practices.
On Wednesday, when contacted by Global News about the review and its outcome, the company stated in an email, “We are working more closely with municipalities and, where possible, stepping up notifications at a community level to let the public know when this work is underway in their area.”
While it’s too late for Brad and Elayne Rix, they hope by raising the issue, homeowners and their trees are given more consideration moving forward.
“Let’s get a positive solution from what we are going through here, so that other people don’t have to go through this,” Brad Rix said.
In a statement of defence, Fortis denies the work was excessive or negligent.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
