friends of dufferin grove park
May 2004 Newsletter

In this issue:

SUNDAYS IN THE PARK IN MAY:

Sunday morning soccer, 10 a.m.: started by Katherine Rankin a few years ago - mixed-gender, non-uniform, non-ref neighbourhood soccer, just for fun. Everyone welcome. The city has kept Sundays free of permits so that the community can use the field.

Open pizza days: Every Sunday from 1 to 3 (unless it's raining), at the community bake-oven. $2 will buy you a lump of dough, some tomato sauce, and some grated cheese. You can pick some herbs from the park garden as soon as they grow big enough, or bring your own additional toppings from home. Tables with rolling pins are set out by the park workers, and once you've made the pizza, it gets put on a peel and baked in the 700 degree fahrenheit wood oven. It only takes a few minutes. The park bakers will also have scones and park cookies and juice for sale.

Garden Party: every Sunday in May from 2 on, garden volunteers will be planting and weeding and making some new garden beds. Everyone welcome, and pizza for garden volunteers is free.

Sand pit play: the Lee Valley tap and the shovels will be out again. Every year we have to buy new round shovels, since about ten get stolen over the course of the season. That's not bad, when you take into account the hundreds of kids who get to be little engineers in the sand pit, digging riverbeds and building bridges and tipis.

This year we were unhappy because the price of shovels had almost doubled (at Wal-mart and at Home Depot). But then we went to Rona's at the old stockyards, and were delighted to find they were still selling short shovels for $5.49. We loaded a dozen shovels into the shopping cart, still wrapped up in a bunch from being shipped to the store, and we tried to bargain for an even lower price. The store's "team leader" we spoke to, Maureen, was very nice but she showed us on the computer that they were making only 22 cents per shovel profit already. So we left well enough alone and bought them at that price. Each shovel has "PARK SHOVEL" prominently marked in red. Please, if you see anyone trying to take one home, ask them not to.

Safety note: back in 1993 there was a community meeting to find out what people wanted in the park. An adventure playground aimed at older kids was high up on the list, and that's how we got the sand pit. But it turns out that all the kids, of all ages, love the sand pit. That's wonderful, but please remember: the older kids have first rights. Grown-ups, if you're worried about your little ones because the playing is too advanced, take them to the little sandbox. Don't get mad at the older kids for using shovels and doing elaborate building projects. On the other hand, every kid using a shovel has to be careful, and most of them are (we have far fewer injuries in the sandpit than in the regular playground). If anyone sees a child who seems to be unaware of how to handle a shovel (swinging it, using it to be pushy, throwing it) any nearby adult has the power to remind the child to be careful or, if there's no improvement, to take the shovel away and find a park staff. Adults used to look out for (and even admonish) other people's kids, not so long ago, and we can do it again.

BIRTHDAY PARTIES

In the spring, summer, and early fall, people often have a birthday party somewhere in the park -- they bring a picnic, hang a pinata in the tree, and have a good time. Anyone can do that anywhere in the park without arranging permission. (There's never a permit needed in this park for a picnic.) It's permitted to bring your own barbecue, and many people do that. It's also possible to get a campfire permit from the park staff for $10 but you need to bring wood yourself (we have a fire stand, pot, frying pan, oven mitts, etc., which we lend out for free).

On Sundays from May to the middle of September, if a birthday party is not too large, you can arrange to have a pizza-making party. We sell portions of dough and toppings and you can bring extra toppings from home if you like. We charge you for the pizza materials ($2 per small pizza) but we don't charge you for the staff to fire the oven and set up for pizza-making. However it's public and therefore you might have to mix with some people who are not in your party, while you're making the pizzas. Just let the park staff know a week or so ahead if you want to be part of Sunday pizza. 416 392-0913.

It is a very cheap way to have a fun birthday party and not have a messy house afterwards, and lots of people do this, and say they have a very good time. The reason we want birthday parties to call ahead is just to make sure we make enough pizza dough.

We almost never accept a private birthday party at the ovens, because the staff are too busy with all the public activities. However, if your Sunday party is over twelve people, we will set up an hour early (12 noon), and that hour is just for your party. It means you have to pay $15 more to cover one extra staff hour. For that, we usually need two weeks' notice.



IN MEMORIAM

On Wednesday May 12, there was a terrible bike accident at Annette and Dupont. Galen Kuellmer, gifted photographer, traveller, adventurer, and beloved companion of Jessica Moore, one of our park staff members, died very soon after he collided at high speed with a truck. Galen's parents are long-time friends-of-the-park Jim Kuellmer, who installed our wildflower sign and got us our grain grinder, and Jan Mackie, whose work at the Spiral Garden supplies us with the gold standard of outdoor play experiences for children. Our hearts go out to Galen's family and to Jessica, and to Galen's many, many friends.



PARK MAINTENANCE

The good news is that since our new park supervisor Brian Green assigned Joe Eschweiler to picking litter more often than the last crew, the park is noticeably cleaner.

Jenny and Joe
Jenny and Joe
The washroom crew, also, has done much better so far this year in keeping the field house washrooms clean. The park washrooms are now being kept open until late, for the convenience of the many soccer and basketball players and picnickers who are taking advantage of the long, long daylight hours of spring. The sandpit had its sand ploughed back in by the case loader, the big logs were replaced around the sandpit's perimeter, and a couple of picnic tables have been moved back down into the Garrison Creek hollow, so the mall staff can have their lunches there.

The bad news is that the supervisor says he has neither compost, nor fence posts, to help us with the park gardens. Nor could he get us any grass seed to overseed thin areas. It's a sad day when Parks and Rec can't come up with these basic materials! Hopefully they'll solve this problem soon.

We asked local carpenter Ross Stuart to fix some things at the park, and he did, quickly and ingeniously. The first thing he did was change the locks on the bench in the playground rain shelter. Because of poor design, the lockable bench (which also contains an electrical outlet) was often vandalized. The city's carpenters spent hours fixing the damage but since the locks were not ever really strong, soon the bench would be broken again. Ross devised a better approach and we think this one may finally solve our problems.

Ross also put new wheels on a broken food cart, built a work table at the side of the small bake oven, fixed some broken benches, and rebuilt the broken play oven in the playground. He works so fast that he would often be done by the time we thought he was just starting the next job. And his charges were very reasonable.

It was wonderful to have him solve all those long-standing problems, even if it meant paying him directly rather than putting in a city work order. (If you want to get in touch with Ross for long-standing problems of your own, or to have a licensed home inspection, click on "neighbourhood", then click on "Food, shopping, trades, and services").

PLAYGROUND REMOVAL

For some years now, the playgrounds of Toronto have been removed at a breakneck rate, some to be replaced, some left bare. This virus began with the day cares, moved to the schools, and then began to affect the parks. It is caused by the city's wholesale adoption of the revised playground standards of the Canadian Standards Association. This is a voluntary association of over 90% manufacturers, with a bit less than 10% of its members from government or from industry associations. Oddly, almost half of the membership of the Canadian Standards Association is not Canadian at all. There are many members from Taiwan, for example, and Hong Kong, and the U.S. - most of them, of course, manufacturers of goods that they want to sell us. The Parks and Recreation Division has by now spent about $6.5 million to do these playground removals and buy new equipment, with an additional $11 million going to day cares for the same thing.

The consensus is that most of the new structures are physically and imaginatively unchallenging to children. More and more, we see children scratching in the sand with a stick, beside these expensive new playgrounds — because making patterns in the sand is still more challenging than playing in these dull "safety playgrounds." Maya Littman, a mother of three young children and a play analyst, has taken on the task of slowing down the destruction of what she calls "much-loved playgrounds." She has now collected more than two thousand signatures of people who want to resist the current playground fad, and she's hoping to present the signatures to Mayor David Miller before the end of May.

Maya has a list of the next playgrounds scheduled for removal — she says the Grange and Hillcrest are due this year and we're due next year. But city staff person Jamie Warren, who is in charge of this process, says we won't be up until 2006. This buys us a little time to work against the disappearance of our "much-loved" play equipment.

Maya is very knowledgeable about all stages of this replacement disease. She says that one of the painful ironies of the "safety playgrounds" is that they're not very safe anyway - teachers are telling her that more kids get hurt now than formerly, maybe because they have to take silly risks to get any excitement at all, playing among these dull structures. To get in touch with Maya, e-mail her at children@playtoronto.com. Read more at www.playtoronto.com

STROLLER FITNESS

In the summer and fall of 2001, Skylar Hill-Jackson used to walk around the park once a week with a group of new mother, as a kind of personal (group) trainer, doing what she calls "a 90-minute fitness workout with stretch and strength, muscular endurance, aerobics and walk/jog options, ending with a discussion on various parenting topics." She says, "Judging by the crop of new babies at the Thursday Farmer's Market it might be time to offer strollerfit at Dufferin Grove again." And indeed, it would be hard not to notice the population explosion in the neighbourhood lately.

The last time, in 2001, Skylar held her class on Tuesdays, and you could see that lively group walking around the whole circumference of the park, pushing their strollers, exercising and looking like they were having fun. Skylar always ended the class at the pizza oven. Exercising makes you hungry. And then on one awful Tuesday in September, the bakers inside the rink house had to come out and tell the group what they had just heard on the radio: that the first World Trade Tower in New York had collapsed. The exercise group stood in the park, along with other little groups from the high school and people coming back from the mall: trying to grasp it (and then hearing that the second tower had collapsed too). It seemed as though ordinary life was ending.

And yet - here we are in another spring three years later, with a new crop of babies and the park still just as beautiful a place to walk around with friends. To register for Skylar's class, call 416 534-0837.

RINK CRACK-UP

Dufferin Rink was all new eleven years ago, re-built for $1.3 million. It's supposed to last for 30 years minimum.

Rink Construction
Rink Construction
But this year we noticed that the concrete surface of our rink is netted with cracks. Some appear to be leaking rust; the others show a yellowish tinge when it's wet out. In our rink compressor room, some of the big pipes are badly rusted, including the bolts that would need to come off for a repair. And all last winter the coolant (brine) was leaking out somewhere under our rink surface, leading to a cliffhanger on several occasions about whether the rink was going to have to close prematurely. Finally, at the beginning of March Break, all the ammonia escaped out of the compressor room ammonia tank in one night. That's when we found out that the rink's alarm system, such as it is, is not monitored by anyone. The rink was then closed.

What caused the cracks, the rust, the yellow, the ammonia escape, the brine leaks? We don't know much, since most of the parks mechanics prefer not to talk. They did say that about 80 gallons of brine were lost daily during the winter because someone had drilled a 2mm hole in the cement and hit a pipe (this was discovered in April). The city mechanics deduced that someone in the community must have done it, maybe as part of some performance or activity on the rink in summer. (But in fact there was no such performance or activity on the rink). A mystery.

Other than that, the city mechanics almost never communicate with the rink house staff - they just go in and out of the compressor room, living in their own bubble. (The park phone is plugged into a jack in the compressor room, and recently when the phone stopped working we found it had been unplugged in there.

Rusty Pipe
Compression Room: Rusty Pipe
A couple of days later it was unplugged again, and when we opened the compressor room door to replace the jack again, some barrels fell on us, which had been propped up against the door. Dirty tricks? We have no idea. Chilly climate? For sure.)

In this troubled context, seven friends of the rink wrote a letter asking the parks management to get an outside rink inspection done by CIMCO, the refrigeration company that supplies the city's equipment (and also services the rinks in Etobicoke). We wanted a prognosis on the rink for next winter, and the winters after that. However, the request was denied by Bob Crump (head of Technical Services) and Parks director Don Boyle. City Councillor Adam Giambrone did not support our request either, and we've asked him to let us know his reasons in a leter. We'll post the letter when it arrives.

The rink cracks are beginning to collect dirt, and where there's dirt there may eventually be flowers. If the Parks department doesn't want to act on this problem, maybe someone in the neighbourhood knows about steps we can take to keep the rink surface from beginning to break up. Should the cracks be hosed down to remove the dirt? Is there a sealant? If you know what to do or you have a savvy concrete contact, please call the park at 416 392-0913, or e-mail us at rinks@dufferinpark.ca. This information would be useful for applying to Christie Rink, Campbell Rink, and Trinity Rink as well, all of which, even though they're newer than our rink, have begun to show cracks. These newer rinks are all cooled by brine. The older rinks in our area, still cooled directly by ammonia, don't have these cracks. A mystery, which needs to explored SOON.

CELOS: THE CENTRE FOR LOCAL RESEARCH INTO PUBLIC SPACE

This is our research arm. Started in 1999, it has two publications to its credit: the cooking-fire booklet and the 2002 park budget booklet. It also curated an international food cart picture display and was involved in the original creation of the current park web site. Then it went dormant for a few years, and now it's back, in the form of the <follow-up group. A small group of legal and public policy researchers is using a combination of funds (the remaining portion of the Jane Jacobs Prize, the 2003 grandmother grant, and snack bar income from this past winter) to

  • study legislation that affects public space (for instance, the employee health and safety legislation that was used to remove the puppets and that threatened our kitchen/farmers' market last winter) and


  • monitor what's happening to the parks department. This includes using the Access to Information legislation to see reports and documents that are kept behind closed doors. In his inaugural speech last December, Mayor David Miller promised a more open city hall, and we're looking forward to it, but there's still a long way to go.
PARKS AND RECREATION "STAKEHOLDER REFERENCE GROUP": At the end of April, Parks and Recreation summoned a group of park advisory council people, as well as some staff of Toronto social service institutions, and some media or cultural representatives, to put their heads together about where Parks and Rec should go from here. Although Dufferin Grove Park is probably one of the longer-running experiments of how parks can work better for neighbourhoods, no one from here was invited. We were curious, though, and we asked whether someone from here could at least sit and listen to what was said at the "reference group's" next meeting. Permission was granted. But now that we've learned a bit more about what city staff are proposing, we're beginning to understand that their not inviting us made sense. We're not on the same page as their staff planners' approach, not even close. Maybe we're not even in the same city!

Lea Ambros (who went to the meeting on behalf of our follow-up research group), brought back the report that describes their thinking, and we've gone through it pretty carefully. It's a draft report, meant to lead to a 3-year "business plan" by the end of this year. But there the problem begins. For the planners at Parks and Rec, the whole department is a business, and park users are always called "customers." (For some years now the different sections of the department have bought and sold services to each other. For instance, when our park water fountain is broken, and the park staff call in a work order for the city's own plumbers, they are put on hold to wait for "the next available customer representative," i.e. the repair dispatcher.)

As near as we can tell, the product of this business is a mixture of saving the environment and saving the people; in other words, they'll be in business for a long time. Their concerns run from teenage sexual troubles, to the condition of 3 million city trees, to fat citizens of all ages, to shifts in the city's ethnicity, to the TV habits of poor kids, to the U.S. Surgeon General's thoughts on how to "maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints." And because the work plan of this business is so ambitious, the ongoing project of keeping track of how it's going seems to be enormous as well. The planners feel that Parks and Rec has to "develop community profiles and undertake community needs assessments on a regular basis." In fact, they have to monitor, analyze, measure, design, have meetings with their corporate or social service partners, and do ad campaigns pretty well continuously.

As if that didn't keep them busy enough, they also have to engage the citizens in "infrastructure and service planning and service delivery" all along the way.

As we thought about this "draft strategic plan" we got pretty alarmed. It's already obvious in our park and many others that the staff are scarce, and so the parks often show signs of being orphaned. With everyone so busy planning and meeting in this new scheme, how will the everyday work get done?

Our follow-up research group is not the only voice asking whether the six-year planning process at Parks and Rec has lost its way pretty thoroughly. For those readers of this newsletter who are concerned, the planners are asking for citizen input: in fact, there is a very cheery "participants' guide" posted on the city's web site. You can find the link, and also more details about the plan from our research group, by clicking on research

NEIGHBOURHOOD FILM-MAKER RELEASES MOVIE: CAMPAIGN

It's finally here, the film about David Miller that friend-of-the-park Andrew Munger was shooting all during Miller's campaign last fall. It's called Campaign: the making of a candidate, and it's being shown first on CBC Newsworld's Rough Cuts on Thursday May 27 at 10 p.m. Andrew spent many hours with then-Councillor Miller, in the car, in the house, and out on the streets, asking questions. This should be a really interesting film.

FOOD IN THE PARK IN MAY

Friday Night suppers will begin around the end of May when the weather warms up. Park staff will post it on the web and record it on the park message machine. In addition to the Sunday pizza days, Wednesday pizza days will start again on May 12 if it's nice out; otherwise on May 19 (12 noon to 2 p.m.). During May, if you want to use the left-over oven heat to cook a picnic supper on Thursdays or Sundays, give the park a call to warn the staff to leave the oven warm and open: 416 392-0913.

FARMERS' MARKET: EVERY THURSDAY 3.30 TO 7 P.M.

The organic market has moved outside for the season. No more crowding! Most of the vendors have their stands along the path between the rink house and Dufferin Street, and a few (meats, bread, market snacks) are located next to the west wall of the rink house. Anyone who wants to be on the weekly market news e-mail list can e-mail market@dufferinpark.ca and we'll put you on. (Please note: hotmail users may find that the market e-mails are often mis-identified as spam and rejected.) If you're missing one look here late Wednesday or early Thursday. The market sells bread (lots), honey, salami, fish, ducks, sausages, hemp, coconut butter, coffee, Soya sweets, Persian salads, all sorts of meals to take home and lots of organic produce - every week, more of it is local now - salad mix, asparagus, herbs, the first garlic, rhubarb, bok choy……..here comes spring.

BREAD-BAKING CLASSES

These are offered by the park's new (and much experienced) baker, Jesse Archibald. The first class is already over. At 8 a.m. on the first Saturday in May, when the group of bakers were gathered around the bake-oven, waiting for their egg bread to be ready and sniffing the sweet spring air of the park, one them said - what a way to start the morning. No need to stay indoors for this class.

The second class is on sourdough progress, and will include sourdough pancakes, apple charlotte in egg bread, and sourdough muffins, and "gaining an understanding of proofing." That class will be on Saturday morning, May 8 with the follow-up and bake-off on Saturday early evening.

The third class will be about mature sourdough baking, with country sourdough and long sourdough, and gaining an understanding of sourdough maintenance. That class will be on Saturday morning, May 15, with the follow-up and bake-off on Sunday morning (May 16).

Cost is $40 for each two-part session, which includes materials (generally, one or two loaves of bread plus some starter to take home) and recipes. The view of spring unfolding in the park, all around the ovens, is free. To register, e-mail Jesse at jessearchibald@yahoo.com or call and leave a message at the park: 416 392-0913.

MUSICAL JAM SESSIONS IN THE RINK HOUSE

There are a lot of musicians in this neighbourhood, both professional and spare-time. Anthony Smith, who loves to play music, is going to be setting up Friday night open jams in the rink house, later on in May: every Friday night, 8 to late. Anthony plans to store an 8-piece drum set in the rinkhouse, so that will make less transportation hassles for drummers (he's willing to share). A nice continuation of fun from Friday Night supper. For information, contact Anthony at surveyti@interlog.com.

FIRST-EVER DUFFERIN GROVE PARK THEATRE FUNDRAISER:

AT THE RIVOLI, 332 QUEEN STREET WEST, SUNDAY MAY 16, 8p.m. ‘til after midnight.

The park has a lot of friends, and those friends do a lot of different things in the day-to-day. Some of them run restaurants and clubs. Andre Rosenbaum and Kelly St.John kindly offered us the use of the performance space at the Rivoli to fund-raise for the park's Cooking Fire Theatre Festival. This is a week-long festival of outdoor performance in the park, in June, produced by a group of local artists with long-standing ties to Dufferin Grove Park. So the fund-raiser is on: a $10 cover charge, lots of friends-of-the-park performers, raffle prizes, all in a very nice space: the Rivoli. For more information, you can go to the Cooking Fire Theatre web page on the arts section of this site, or call 416 516-0923.


For ongoing updates on Dufferin Grove Park, and to share your views on community issues, join our Friends of Dufferin Grove email listserve. Just click here to join.

Newsletter prepared by: Jutta Mason; Illustrations: Jane LowBeer

Technical support: John Culbert

Webmasters: Joe Adelaars, Henrik Bechmann

Park phone: 416 392-0913; street address: 875 Dufferin Street

E-mail: dufferinpark@dufferinpark.ca

List Serve: Emily Visser, Bernard King

Park photographer: Wallie Seto