The Dufferin Grove Farmers' market has its own website

The Weekly Market Notes are available on-line at www.dufferingrovemarket.ca

The Farmers' Market continues all year round, every Thursday, rain or shine.

Current News

Out with the old, in with the new?

In the fall of 2017, the city issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to plan a complete makeover of the rink, clubhouse and surrounding area. The contract has been awarded: $694,747 to DTAH Architects Ltd. for "professional and technical design consulting services for a new community recreation clubhouse and park improvements at northwest corner of Dufferin Grove Park." Whew! To think that the original community makeover cost only $51,000! The city's information website is here. More news and updates here.

A park booklet: "Dufferin Grove Park as a neighbourhood commons, 1993 to 2015" is posted here -- a little history, at the end of an era, with stories, lots of coloured photos, and some short interviews. To get a paper copy, e-mail celosadmin@gmail.com.

Park maintenance

garden gate

In warm weather, the park fills up with people. There's lots of activity and that means lots of litter and things needing repair. Follow our maintenance diary here.

Example: The bigger bake oven, in its 23rd year, is in good shape. But everything needs some upkeep. Since city management doenn't want to do oven maintenance, maybe CELOS will fix it instead. Same for the Children's Garden gate.

main drain, May 2016

Wading Pool

City staff said that in the spring of 2017 they would remove the slippery coating and return to the concrete surface below. This work did not happen. Will it be done this (2018) spring? The wading pool troubles -- and some examples of easy fixes -- are shown here.

Some older wading pool adventure stories are here. The step-by-step progress of the $227,400 wading pool renovation in 2008/2009 is here. The fixes that had to be done right after the renovation are here. The current chlorine regime is analyzed here.

Skateboard park

The unofficial skateboard park on the rink pad was even more busy than usual last season. On April 21 the pre-season fixes started for this season.

Skateboarders like to make videos, and there are lots posted by people from Dufferin Grove -- some samples from Gerb Seamon here and here.

Our public ovens website now includes 18 Toronto ovens

Every oven has its own page with pictures and diary entries.

The Dufferin Grove oven has a few interesting issues, under city management: read about them here.

On August 23, 2017, the new bake oven at Sorauren park had its first pizza fire. It's used every warm-weather Monday for their farmers' market -- photos here.

Farm video

Farmers Ayse and Jens from Marvellous Edibles Farm told us at the market that one of their summer interns has made a short, lively video of life on their farm. Watch it here .

To read about the problems that challenge the city's 53 outdoor rinks -- and some easy fixes -- see this CityRinks 2016 Outdoor Rinks Report. It was presented at city hall on April 13, 2016, but got no attention. More on this story is here and here.

Most (not quite all) parts of this website are now an ARCHIVE. There are no more postings of Dufferin Grove Park city-run events. To find out why: editorial June 2015