friends of dufferin grove park
June 2005 Newsletter
posted June 3, 2005

Vol. 6, Nr. 5 — In this issue:

EVENTS IN JUNE:

THE LITTLE FOLK FESTIVAL - SUNDAY JUNE 5 11 A.M. TO 6 PM.
From organizer Laura Repo: “Named The Little Folk Festival for its size - one stage only - and in honour of the little people who inhabit the park, this FREE festival is for folk of all sizes!  The festival features musical performers who are also parents , most of whom consider the park a second home. These are the performers:
• laid back edgy pop from Georgie Donais and a band of family members  (Georgie is also in charge of the cob building project);
• the passion and offbeat sense of humour of singer-songwriter Arlene Bishop;
Blair Packham's "refreshingly unpopular pop";
Max Metrault's Rancho Misterio - conjunto dance band music from Texas & Northern Mexico;
• the exquisite harmony of Zari, a trio who specialize in music from the Georgian Republic;
• the dark melodies and poetic lyrics of Mia Sheard;
Leah Salomaa's traditional music for kids;
Ravi Naimpally's tabla-led Tasa;
• and finally, the country-folk of Laura Repo and The Blue Healers.
The festival winds up with a community dinner, cooked in the wood-burning oven. $5 for the main plate - bring your own plate / cutlery or it’s $6).  The music continues unplugged with traditional Irish music played by Karen Light and friends - Karen is a mother and grandmother in the neighbourhood and Laura Repo's aunt.
Weather note: In the event of EXTREME weather, the Festival will relocate to The Gladstone Hotel (Queen at Gladstone) at the same day and time.  Kids are welcome and the sound will be kind to small ears.  The Dufferin bus can shuttle people back to the park afterwards for a community dinner inside the rink house. Call the park if you‘re not sure.
The Little Folk Festival got special support from volunteers, including all the musicians; and the generous support of local businesses: Long and McQuade, Front Door Organics, Goo Factory & Kwik Kopy Printing.  Remember the event is FREE but donations are very welcome-expect a hat to be passed your way!”

COB COURTYARD BUILDING: STARTS SATURDAY JUNE 11
Toronto Public Health inspectors have told us to get proper sinks for food preparation by the wading pool this coming summer or stop doing the playground food cart. Georgie Donais is directing the building of a little courtyard around the sinks, and continuing on from there, to create an outdoor gathering-place. The courtyard walls will be built with a sand-clay-straw mix known as "cob" or "monolithic adobe", which is mixed by foot and applied by hand.
From Georgie: “The first stage of the project will provide a spot for the washing station required by Public Health. As the wall extends, it can be built to include arches, doorways, niches, shelves, benches, a puppet window, sculptures and mosaics, small roofs, and a lavatory. Native plantings will be incorporated around and within the courtyard. The project will be planned in stages, starting with the washing station, and extending further as time and resources allow.
This project aims to engage all users of the park, especially the parents and children who make the south end of the park their summer home. They will be the main users of the structure once it is built, and can make sizable contributions to its creation. Adults and children of all ages will be welcomed and encouraged to participate in building. For children who have less interest in participating than their caregivers, there will be some supervised play while the adults build.” Foundation work starts Saturday June 11.

CITY COUNCILLOR ADAM GIAMBRONE’S Parkfest: Saturday June 18. The councillor’s staff were not sure of the time or other details at the time of the newsletter printing. For more information call their office at 416 392-7012.

NO ONE IS ILLEGAL COMMUNITY FAIR AND REFUGEE CAMP: Saturday June 18th Noon - 8pm. From organizer Mac Scott: “Come out and enjoy great music and food, and learn more about the struggle for justice for immigrants and refugees in Toronto.”

CLAY AND PAPER THEATRE’S “DAY OF DELIGHT,” SUNDAY JUNE 19, 1-4pm. From their web site: “A Festival of Love & Courtship is Clay & Paper Theatre's newest celebratory performing arts festival. Each spring, we put out a call for new submissions to be performed at the festival and keep one or two as part of the festival's permanent repertoire. The hope is to develop a ‘Toronto love cycle’ of new Canadian works in honour of love and courtship.”

SECOND ANNUAL COOKING FIRE THEATRE FESTIVAL, JUNE 22 - 26.
Celebrating theatre, food and public space in the park. From the organizers: “Five innovative  theatre companies from Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Every evening, a guide will lead the audience throughout the park for performances that incorporate clowning, puppetry, physical theatre, storytelling, and song. Delicious food served at the cooking fire and the park ovens. Pay-what-you-can.
SCHEDULE: 5:30 PM: Dinner outside by the oven. (Pay what you can also)
6:30 ~ Number Eleven Theatre (Toronto) ~ "The Stolen Child": Created and performed by Number Eleven in collaboration with 15 children from Toronto's West End. This site-specific premiere is based on the recurring mythological theme of child abduction by fairies.
7:00 ~ Stranger Theatre (Toronto) ~ "The World Turned Upside Down" In 1649, the revolutionary English Diggers took over common land held by wealthy landowners in order to build cottages and grow food. Using their original songs and manifestos, this entertaining premiere by Stranger Theatre will tell the tale of their heroic rise and eventual downfall.
7:30 ~ A Company of Fools (Ottawa) ~ "Shakespeare's Interactive Circus" Rap, improvisation, fine physical acting and other theatre traditions blend together for an exhilarating, irreverent romp through a number of Shakespeare's plays. Company of Fools recreate the atmosphere of the Globe Theatre and interact with the audience in a high-energy, fast-paced performance.
8:00 PM: Break
Organic desserts from the wood fired bake ovens.
8:30 ~ Le Petit Théâtre de l'Absolu (Montreal) ~ "Birds of the Coming Storm"
Drawing inspiration from the Chicago Haymarket Riot of 1886, the members of Le Petit Théâtre de l'Absolu will sketch out tragic histories of rebellion against the status quo. From intimate toy theatre to outdoor spectacle, they rely on the old techniques of puppetry to engage with the contemporary moment, to lambaste the powerful, and to remember the forgotten.
9:00 ~ red red rose (Toronto) ~ "Joan"
Joan is an eclectic and curious retelling of the story of Joan of Arc, using puppets, song and "a hell of a lot of gusto" (eye weekly). While the audience will witness high drama, wild creatures and a burning at the stake, Joan is essentially about storytelling: the relationship between the story and the teller, and the impact stories have on our lives.”
ADDED EXTRAS: A Company of Fools, who have been performing Shakespeare on the streets of Ottawa for the last fifteen years, will be presenting the premiere of their new show, an all ages adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, on Thursday, June 23 at 1:00 and on Sunday, June 26 at 2:30.  Both shows are pay what you can.  The show will open in Ottawa the week after The Cooking Fire Festival.
On Friday, June 24, there will be a performance by Cuban Salsa band Poquito Grande, beginning at 5:30 and going through dinner. More information in other parts of this web site.

FOOD IN THE PARK

Food cart - Weekends in June when the weather’s nice, at the playground. This year we’ll have more varied kinds of brunch/lunch foods, using ingredients from the farmers’ market and the park gardens, cooked in the park ovens.
Saturday morning baking: from the park bakers: “the bread cart will be selling fresh park oven breads and breakfast pastries from 10 a.m. Saturdays, and will feature organic baguettes, brioche, and during June, strawberry-rhubarb-filled brioche buns.”
Friday Night Supper: Every Friday from 6 to 7:30p.m., at the bake oven. No need to make a reservation: there's lots of food. A community dinner cooked in the park bake ovens with farmers' market produce. $6 for the main plate unless you bring your own dishes ($1 off). The main plate is always a choice of meat or (usually) vegan. There's always park bread, a salad, soup, and dessert (they cost extra but it's hard to spend much more than $10 per meal). If it's raining hard, no supper (call 416-392-0913 if you're not sure). If it's a cool night, there's a campfire to linger at with your friends.
SPECIAL NOTE:  THE FIRST PARK SUPPER IS ACTUALLY ON SUNDAY JUNE 5, AFTER THE LITTLE FOLK FESTIVAL. After that it really is on Fridays.
Pizza days - during June, pizza days will be on Wednesdays from 12 to 2 and Sundays from 1 to 3.  For $2 a portion, you can buy a small lump of organic pizza dough, sauce, and cheese, and make your own pizza in the oven (staff help you bake it). You can pick toppings in the park gardens to put on as well, or bring extra toppings from home. A very nice way to meet new neighbours or get together with friends.
If you want to include pizza at the oven in a birthday party, that’s possible on Sundays between 11.30 and 1 and from 3 to 4.  You can book it with park staff Mayssan Shuja Udin at 416 392-0913. The staff cost is $36 extra on top of the pizza cost of $2 per pizza. If you have more than forty people, that will need an extra staff person for another $18. To find out more, call the park or go to the web site at www.dufferinpark.ca and click on “bake ovens and food.”
Picnics: now that the weather is warm again, the park is sometimes full of picnics and family celebrations. There are plenty of picnic tables - feel free to move them to where you need them, but if you take them far from where they were, please move them back afterwards (especially tables taken from the oven and the wading pool area).
    THERE IS NO CHARGE FOR HAVING A PICNIC AND NO NEED TO BOOK AHEAD.
Campfires: The friends of the park have a standing year-round campfire permit at three park locations. Park staff will train you in campfire safety, give you water, pails, and a shovel, and kindling if you need it. You have to bring your own wood. For more information or to book a permit, call the park at 416 392-0913 and ask for Matt or Mayssan. You can also go to the park web site at  www.dufferinpark.ca and click on “campfires.”

SOCCER PERMITS:

The Toronto Eagles children's soccer club has the soccer field permit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings and Saturdays until 2. On Thursday evenings, the permit belongs to the "Portugal 2004" children's soccer club. This has been the case for 4-5 years.
    From Saturday 2.30 p.m. until Sunday evening, the permits are there for community groups. These are the rules: two-hour time slots/ usually only half the field/ include any neighborhood person who wants to play soccer but doesn't have a group/ mixed-gender or all-male or all-female. This is an experiment not carried out elsewhere in the city, i.e. free "community" permits that have some participant flexibility, a bit like shinny-hockey. Anyone who gets a permit has to show up for a post-season get-together in late fall to talk about whether this format works.
To get connected to an existing community soccer group, you can call the park at  416 392-0913 or e-mail soccer@dufferinpark.ca with your preferred time. We'll try to match you up.
Other soccer possibilities that don't need a permit:
    * any day before 6 p.m. in the summer (St.Mary's has the daytime booked during the school year),
    * anytime in the Garrison Creek hollow over by Dufferin Street (a cop from Fourteen Division told us that that's where everyone used to play when he was a kid).

TRASH POLICE:

A City by-law enforcement officer has been going through park trash bags to find out if household garbage is being dumped at the park. In such cases, she often finds evidence of addresses, and she then goes to that house and gives them a ticket for $375.  The park garbage bins also have new signs on them, warning of fines between $5000 and $10,000 for dumping household trash in parks. At the bottom of the signs it says: there may be a cash reward for reporting illegal dumping.  (Snitching on our neighbours for money? That sounds like a direction we might not want to take.) The by-law enforcement officer tells us that the problem is not bad at our park - only two or three trash baskets tend to have household garbage, and some of those folks have now been given a ticket.

THANK YOU’S TO:

Connie Chisholm, park friend and carpenter, who fixed the rink house rocking bench that Leemala Ragubance donated last winter. The rocking bench was really popular but not designed for use by so many people. Connie reinforced it so well that it’s all set for the next five hundred people who want to sit and rock in it (not all at once).
Park supervisor Brian Green: despite (or because of) his strained park maintenance budget, Brian scrounges things for the parks he looks after,  whenever he comes across anything lying unused in a back corner of a parks service yard. So he found some old pieces of plywood and his crew fixed the worn-out, holey tennis practice board on the rink fence. Now he’s located some solid chess/checkers tables and stools that are being removed from other parks (at the community’s wish) (?!). Those tables will let Chris Schallert expand the kids’ chess club this summer, down by the playground.
Shanti Nahata: he had the idea that every Sunday at 10 a.m., park friends who like exercising could meet at the rink for 20 minutes of park cleanup followed by a 30 minute run/walk/stroll and refreshments.  Shanti’s motto: “Help your community and your body.”  If you want to join them, just come to the park at that time or contact: Shanti at sln@itgsys.com or Bruce Whitaker at  whitaker@rogers.com.
Forestry supervisor Mark Procunier: he came to the park at our request to do a tree inventory and figure out which trees may have to come down (before they fall down on someone) and where some replacement trees could be planted. After many years with no new plantings, Mark was very encouraging about our chances of getting some new trees.

CITY PLAYGROUND-REPAIR SECRETS GO TO ARBITRATION - JUNE 22

A letter came by courier on June 1: the Province of Ontario’s ’s Information and Privacy Commissioner is summoning Jutta Mason (for CELOS, our little research group) and the City of Toronto to a hearing about the playground repair money that is unaccounted for. Working with Maya Littman's group of playground advocates, we've been trying to find out for over a year:  how come so many park playgrounds lost equipment that was not replaced, or replaced with cheap, dumbed-down equipment? The receipts for a special playground repair fund of nearly $5 million are missing. The City said they would look for the receipts if we paid them $12,900 for the staff time to find them. It’s our contention that finding out what happened to the playgrounds is in the public interest, and we shouldn’t be charged for the City’s sloppiness, above the taxes we already pay. We’ll see what the freedom of information Commissioner’s adjudicator thinks: June 22, 9 a.m., 2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400.

MEDIA WATCH - hurray for freedom of the press

Trying to make the park work better can be discouraging at times. We’ve been trying for a long time now to find out why our playground equipment is endangered. We’ve also been wondering why, with a yearly Parks and Recreation budget of over $200 million, there is never money to fix the rutted thoroughfare that is the main promenade through our very well-used park. And why, when it takes $600,000 a year to run a rec centre with walls, the City can find only $80,000 a year to run our equally popular “community centre without walls” (an impossible task again this year - and this year we will not be going hat in hand to park users to make up the balance). And how come recreation staff in Toronto make less than half the hourly wage of the litter-picking staff? 
    But trying to find out where the money goes is a long mostly-boring-sometimes-astonishing game of snakes and ladders.
    Near the end of May, all the media carried news of a study that apparently vindicated the widespread dumbing-down of school playgrounds (which also went on in City parks). We were familiar with the study, which we think is so deeply flawed in its design that a first-year statistics student would have received a failing grade if s/he had presented it as an assignment. But the uncritical play it got in the media made us wonder if publicists are everywhere now, and “resistance is futile.”
    We got a happy surprise when the Globe published a scathing editorial about the playground study on May 25, entitled “Smoke and Mirrors on Playground Safety.” They pointed out the huge flaws in the data, and concluded “this damaging overprotectiveness in child-rearing turns out to be more finger-wagging and hot air.” The editorial is posted on our new wall-newspaper at the playground.
    And then Robert Cribb of the Star called to do an interview on our access-to-information troubles with the City. Our example became one of countless other problem-stories in a cross-country, multi-newspaper feature on the reluctance of governments to comply with the freedom of information law. 
    So maybe resistance is not futile. To find out more, or to get involved, you can go to the park web site www.dufferinpark.ca, and click on “research.”
   


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