Vol. 6, Nr. 2 — In this issue:

• Yellow skates
• Playground cob structure
• How the park works
• Conflicts as property
• Puppets on Ice Feb.27
• Rink schedule
• Friday night suppers change

YELLOW SKATES AND RED HOCKEY STICKS

The NHL Players’ Association’s gift of fifty children’s hockey sets arrived in the second week of January. West End park supervisor Tino DeCastro had arranged for this donation, and he then got all the skates sharpened, at McCormick Arena. Then our park staff sprayed the (excellent quality) skates yellow, the hockey sticks red, and put markings on the hockey gloves. The park staff called and faxed all the local schools to let them know that we have helmets here now, so the teachers can bring their kids for a skate without having to drag giant bags of helmets along. A big record book was readied for recording names and I.D. of people borrowing skates, sticks, gloves, helmets. Laces were put into all the skates. In the last week of January, the word went out that the skates and other hockey gear were ready. The first people to borrow them were girls from Argentina, Brazil, and Portugal. They told us that shinny hockey is a really fun sport. Next were several school classes and the McCormick after-school program. Some of those kids went home and told their families, so on the last weekend in January, grandparents and cousins turned up, with more kids. Even on Sunday, when there’s only pleasure-skating, there were so many yellow skates on the ice. We’ve started gathering signatures for a giant thank-you letter to the NHL players - what a wonderful donation.

A FINE RINK SEASON

Sometimes, especially on weekends, the rink house looks like a European train station - there are so many people coming in and out, or sitting on the benches, and on clear winter days the low sunlight slanting through the windows gives a dreamy illumination to all the goings on. The rink season has been the best in years - between good ice weather and really good ice maintenance by Toronto rinks supervisor Brian Green and his crews, skaters have had a lot of joy. Our rink has stuck to its practice of confining special permits to the after-hours time, and allowing overflow shinny hockey on the pleasure-skating side after 9 p.m. This means someone has to return to the rink to lock up every night at 11 p.m., which is tiring. But it’s worth it. There are only three months of ice (maybe three and a half this year), and our rink makes every hour count.

Lots of skaters mean lots of appetite (all that fresh air). The park cooks have added various new foods to the menu this year, and Jessie Sosnicki’s farmers’ market perogies are back too. Also, for those who want to get an early start at the rink on Saturdays: Mary Sylwester cooks pancakes every Saturday morning, made with fresh-ground buckwheat, fruit compote (Mennonite strawberrries, blueberries, apples from the farmers’ markets) and maple syrup. Delicious! (And one Saturday in January when Mary was off sick, Dean Pearlmutter, who was there to skate, put on an apron and made the pancakes instead.)

$500 in loonies earned from the sale of rink food went to Thailand in the form of a bank draft in January, to help buy a new fishing boat for some traditional fishermen stranded by the tsunami. Your loonies at work.

HOW THE PARK WORKS

The recent e-storm about human rights legislation affecting the rink has shown that there is some mystery about how this park is run. So here are the facts: Dufferin Grove Park is operated by the City of Toronto Parks and Recreation Division. It is not operated by the friends of the park, nor by volunteers.

The friends of Dufferin Grove Park are not an organization. There is no executive, no annual meetings, no formal status. That’s why, when the Parks Department holds a meeting of community advisory groups, the friends don’t get invited. There is no written agreement anywhere between the friends and the city.

So how does it work then? And who are the "friends of Dufferin Grove Park"?

The friends in this case are all those people - more every year - who are friendly to that 14.2-acre city-owned common space which is bordered by the Dufferin Mall, St.Mary’s Catholic High School, and the mixture of affluent and subsidized housing that abuts the park to the east and the south. Most park friends express their friendship only though their joy at what goes on in the park. At the other extreme, for the past 12 years, Jutta Mason has made friendship for the park her almost-full-time hobby. In between, there are many people who give things (time, plants, music, theatre, toys in the sandpit, conversation, sports skills, etc., etc.) as they feel moved to do that. There is no schedule to how these things are given, no five-year plan - it’s (sorry) organic. (There’s more about this in the "about us" section of the dufferinpark web site.)

The gifts of the park’s friends are often enlarged (instead of being bureaucratically blocked) by the open-minded let’s-make-it-work approach of the city parks staff who are responsible for this park. In particular, Tino DeCastro and Brian Green (the supervisors of the parks in this part of town) have this attitude, as does James Dann, the manager above them - very much. The staff working directly in the park are Daniel Malloy, Lea Ambros, Gabriella Mihelik, Matt Leitold, Anna Bekerman, Jake Sherman, Ted Carlisle, Mayssan Shuja-Uddin, Mary Sylwester, Zio Hersch, Aleks Meuse, Cristian Torres-Lozano, and Amy Withers. They all work as part-time casual staff. They’re paid by the city but they also add in their additional gifts - their particular talents, their enjoyment of the park friends, their sense of surprise and adventure. The park works through the good will of all these people, not through a set structure.

A COB STRUCTURE BY THE PLAYGROUND

"Cob" is a building material made of clay and rubble and straw. The clay gets smoothed over the surface so that walls look a bit rounded. Benches and alcoves and fireplaces can be readily incorporated into the walls. It’s an OLD way of building that’s catching on again. Lucky for the park, Georgie Donais, who knows all about cob, wants to work with other park users to add a little cob structure near the wading pool. To get people started thinking about it, we’ll set up a table at the rink house on Friday Feb.11 at 6 p.m. for people who want to come and eat park food and look at Georgie’s books and talk to her about her cob structure ideas. Please call the park by Thursday Feb.10 to let them know if you want a place at that table: 416 392-0913.

THE BREASTFEEDING CONFLICT AS OUR COMMUNITY PROPERTY

Some years ago, a Norwegian criminologist named Nils Christie wrote a famous essay entitled "Conflicts as Property." In it he suggested that conflicts are a precious resource for a community so long as the people in the community get to argue, negotiate, get mad, get over it, try out solutions — together. Once a conflict gets packed off to the courts, Christie said, the community loses the benefit of it.

This may seem like an upside-down way of looking at trouble — as a precious "property" belonging to ordinary people, that the courts must not steal from us. But when Jutta Mason first read Christie’s essay, she got really interested. Soon after that, she got involved in the park, and during the thirteen years since then, his idea really helped sometimes. Working through the hard times can make the good times sweeter.

Conflicts are scary, of course, and the temptation to hide them or gloss over them or squash them is great. So on January 8, when Erika Ross sent her e-mail to the "Friends of Dufferin Grove Park" — saying an illegal act, a human rights violation, had been committed by Jutta speaking to her — some park friends said, don’t say anything back, just apologize fast. Jutta said, "…but I disagree with what she is saying. I just asked her to pull her shirt down more while breastfeeding, to accommodate other people."

That’s where the courts come in. The Human Rights Commission, some park friends said, operates on the basis of "guilty until proven innocent." In this case, the friends said, no matter who is troubled by it, you’re not allowed to say anything at all about a breastfeeding woman’s state of undress. If you do, there may be a lawsuit, there may be a fine. There can be years of complicated negotiations in the courts, starting with a tribunal, on to a civil court case and on from there, perhaps, to an appeal.

All that for speaking to a woman who was about to breastfeed her brand new little baby? Pick your battles, said some park friends, give in and just forget about it.

But not everyone said that. Others felt that if the human rights code truly means that even just saying something to a breastfeeding woman — something that she doesn’t like — is an illegal act, then the fundamental freedom of speech comes into question. That’s not a question that ought to be dropped easily.

A puzzle. City Councillor Adam Giambrone said it was a "no-brainer," he knew a breastfeeding right when he saw one. E-mails carried in messages from Missouri and Louisiana, Newfoundland, Rochester, and Scranton Pennsylvania, calling for retraction or punishment. NOW Magazine published a fairly balanced article, but atoned for it by printing critical reader mail for two weeks running — with a particularly shrill one from Massachusetts. Janice Reynolds, identified as the "Consumer Rep on the Breastfeeding Committee for Canada," weighed in from Saskatchewan, talking to a friend at Toronto Public Health "high up" who told her that the Medical Health Officer had asked to be briefed about the issue. (This "consumer rep" was tireless in her ideas, even suggesting — in an online forum called mothering.commune — a plan to entrap Jutta into a pattern of lawbreaking that would make litigation easier.) Joanne Gilmour, the Toronto Public Health spokesperson, declined to talk with us. Parks and Recreation Director Don Boyle declined as well, and in an e-mail he sent on February 1, tried to shut down more discussion. (He also enclosed some fact-sheets on the benefits of breastfeeding.)

Don’s "I’m not going to talk to you about it" e-mail prompted us to finally send out a "help needed" message to friends of the park. And that’s where Nils Christie, the criminologist, comes back in. On the weekend after the "help needed" message, the weather was exceptionally lovely, and the rink was full of skaters from Friday to Sunday. The talk about the issue of breastfeeding/ freedom of speech/ hurt feelings flowed on and on, inside the rink house, out on the ice, up along the snow hills, around the bake oven, back inside the rink house in front of the wood stove. The breastfeeding conflict — the energetic differences of outlook that Nils Christie said should be kept within the community — began to return to their rightful context.

— Many people expressed their incredulity about this friendly park being represented on the web, in the news, or down at City Hall as a battleground for breastfeeding rights.

— There was also a steady thread of worry about Erika Ross, and her vulnerability as the mother of a new baby and a two-year-old, caught in a situation she surely did not anticipate when she wrote her initial e-mail.

— Cynicism about the tunnel vision of new parents got some play among older or childless folks, and vexation about the giant strollers that block access in the rink house and the market. — At the same time, joy at the beauty and liveliness of the ubiquitous babies in what Herschel Streuman calls the "fertility crescent" in this neighborhood.

— Over and over (among all ages, with or without kids) there was the theme of the need for balance, common sense, willingness to accommodate other cultures and ages.

— A mother of twins told how tough it was to go places with baby twins, how you could try to be careful but you just would be uncovered sometimes. A mother with a new baby sat in the rink house with her friends and family, eating the park’s beef casserole and breastfeeding at the same time, and joking about doing a typical-breastfeeding photo for the web site.

— There was consternation about the feeling of anger that had entered the dufferingrovefriends list serve so quickly as postings began to flood in, the nastiness, the futility of making arguments in that forum. The shiftiness of the web got lots of mention — people writing in with pseudonyms or several different "handles," often from unspecified locations. (New Zealand? Ossington?)

— And then there was the big question — if this park runs so much on good will that spreads out across differences, how do we return to that?

Back to Nils Christie again. It seems like everyone agrees on three things already — first thing, drop the e-mail arguments. This is not a virtual neighbourhood. The conflict was at Dufferin Grove Park, and that’s where it will be worked out. Those folks who want to participate from outside the neighbourhood will have to come to the park in person. Second thing: the people at City Hall, who can (quite legitimately) make decisions affecting out park, need to engage directly with us about what should or could go on here. A letter-writing campaign has begun to encourage them to have a direct, open conversation (send e-mails to the general manager of Parks and Recreation, Brenda Librecz: BLibrecz@toronto.ca and Councillor Adam Giambrone: Councillor_Giambrone@toronto.ca. Third thing: stop talking about taking this conflict to court. It’s unlikely to get far, but more importantly, it needs to be worked out here. The hope is that Erika Ross and her family will return to using the park with enjoyment, and will gradually, as the occasions arise, re-join the local conversation about how to accommodate differences. The shades of opinion in this conflict are as numerous as the flowers in spring, and if they’re all given a legitimate place in the ongoing park conversations, maybe someday there will be a garden.

DUFFERIN GROVE PARK OUTDOOR ARTIFICIAL ICE RINK

HOURS OF OPERATION:

Rink clubhouse: open Monday to Saturday: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. , Sundays: 9 a.m. to 8.30 p.m.

Shinny hockey: same hours as the rink clubhouse except Sundays.

Pleasure-skating: always freely available. After 9 p.m., skating is unsupervised. Building closes at 9, rink gates close at 11 p.m.

Parking: the best place to park is east of the rink on Dufferin Park Avenue (at the north boundary of the park). You have to walk west a short distance along the pedestrian walkway at the north side of the rink. Or you can park at the Dufferin Mall across the street.

Rink shinny hockey schedule:

Monday - Friday:

9:00am - 3:30pm all ages
3:30pm - 5:30pm Level 2 (about 13 to 17, medium pace)
5:30pm - 6:30pm Level 1 (12 and under and parent or caregiver, or novice adult)
6:30pm - 7:45pm all ages
7:45pm - 8:55pm Level 3 (usually 18 and over, fast-paced)

SEASONAL AND WEEKLY PERMITS FOLLOW — CONTACT STAFF

Saturday

9:00am - 12:00pm all ages
12:00pm - 1:30pm Level 1 (12 and under and parent or caregiver, or novice adult)
1:30pm - 3:45pm all ages
3:45pm - 5:15pm Level 2 (about 13 to 17, medium pace)
5:15pm - 7:00pm all ages
7:00pm - 8:45pm Level 3 (usually 18 and over, fast paced)

WEEKLY PERMITS FOLLOW — CONTACT STAFF

Sunday

10:00am - 6:00pm No shinny hockey. Pleasure skating both sides. (9.45 - 1.30 learn-to-skate program on part of the ice)


SEASONAL PERMITS FOLLOW

New: Women’s shinny, Tuesdays 9-10p.m.. Single-occasion permits are available Tuesday and Wednesdays 10 p.m.-11 p.m., Fridays 9 p.m. - 10 p.m. and 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., and Saturdays 9 p.m. to closing. For adults the single-occasion permits cost $67.50. For children and youth, there is no charge. To book a permit, call the rink at 416/392-0913.

RINK PHONE NUMBER: 416 392-0913, to find out current ice skating conditions

Rink information (for all city rinks) is also available here on our web site

The rink season is extended this year, at some rinks including ours, to last to the end of March Break (last rink day is March 20, weather permitting).

PUPPETS ON ICE

On Sunday, February 27, Clay and Paper Theatre’s puppets will take to their skates for their yearly mummer’s ice play. Last year they came on St. Valentine’s Day, and Cavan Young made a film of the puppets for the National Film Board (we’ll show the video this year). There will also be special medieval recipes cooked in the bake oven (to mark the medieval nature of mummer’s plays).

For people who want to participate in the performance (as usual, everyone is welcome, kids of course included), Clay and Paper Theatre’s director David Anderson says there may be a pre-puppets-on-ice open workshop at the rink the week before). Watch the park bulletin board and the web site for announcements.

FRIDAY NIGHT SUPPERS ARE OVER UNTIL SPRING

This past year, the Friday Night Suppers at the park grew bigger than the cooks and the park friends had expected when they started the suppers the year before last. The cooking was often fun but sometimes it seemed that new people thought the suppers were more like a conveniently-cheap kid-friendly restaurant than a chance to meet their neighbours. The rink house presented particular problems. We tried to make some changes - replace chairs with benches, put the tables into long rows - to encourage people to squash closer together and talk to strangers. It worked at first but not for long. People soon resumed "saving" big parts of the tables for only their friends, and if strangers sat next to them, there was often no effort to include them in the talk. The good will that’s needed for a rink supper to be fun was in short supply with some groups, replaced by complaints about the service (?!) and the crowding. But the supper was never intended to be a service. In addition, people who just came to skate and play hockey were squeezed out into the cold to change, not only during the supper but also after (people lingered longer and longer at their tables, unaware of the skaters). Between the farmers’ market and the supper with kids playing indoor tag and toys to trip over, the skaters began to wonder out loud if they were going to be displaced completely.

So the cooks and some of the park friends concluded that they’d better call a halt to the community suppers for now, and rethink the idea. That doesn’t mean the end of the wonderful food (the cooks love to cook), but the long tables won’t be set up and the rink house will be focused mainly on people who come to skate. When the skaters get hungry, they can just sit at one of the little tables, or balance the plate on their lap by the side of the rink or around the campfire. That works out fine too.

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Newsletter prepared by: Jutta Mason; Illustrations: Jane LowBeer

Technical support: John Culbert

Webmasters:Henrik Bechmann, Joe Adelaars,

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

E-mail: dufferinpark@dufferinpark.ca

Park photographer: Wallie Seto

Printing: Quality Control Printing at Bloor and St. George