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Welcome to the Bake Ovens and Food pages

Food is an important part of life at the park, and there's lots of it. The Bake Ovens produce much of the food sold at the park, and they are at the centre of the many parts of the food life around the park. See Food In The Park for more information.

posted April 15, 2004

Where

The two wood ovens are near the basketball courts and the outdoor ice rink, at the northwest corner of the park. They're next to some flower and vegetable gardens that are surrounded by split-rail fences to keep the dogs out. Roses grow over the fence, and beans and squash in season. Sometimes in winter if it's really cold out, skaters come off the ice to stand by the oven nearest the rink, to try and warm themselves. But the ovens are not very warming, because they were designed to channel all their heat into their baking chamber.

News 2010

From the March 2010 Newsletter:

SUNDAY March 28, Noon till 3:00 p.m. 12th annual MATZAH BAKE at the bake-oven

From organizer Mitch Davis: “ Join us at Dufferin Grove Park to bake Matzot in the wood burning outdoor oven. See if you can mix, kneed, roll, and bake in 18 minutes or less.

Materials and instructions provided (but bring your own timer if you want to aim for 18 minutes). Everyone is welcome; bring the kids. Coffee will be provided by Ezra's Pound Cafe. Look for dufferin grove park matzah bake” on facebook. Suggested donation to cover expenses: $5 per family.”

CITY POLICIES AND COMMUNITY BAKE-OVENS

Catherine Porter, made aware of the “local versus central” problem with Parks, Forestry and Recreation, wrote a second column on the topic on February 25, this time about the use of the bake-oven at Christie Pits. She wrote that the “Friends of Christie Pits” were alarmed that the tighter central control on permits was about to stop their Friday night drop-in pizza-making gatherings. If permit policy meant the park friends were going to be charged for a permit every time they wanted to have a Friday evening pizza gathering around the oven, and that they’d have to cover the staffing cost as well, pizza nights would stop.

The column really touched a nerve. The Star got a record number of comments, most of them angry at the City, and apparently from all sides of the political spectrum. Councillor Davis sent a letter to everyone who wrote to her: “Never, at any time, has the Friends of Christie Pits been asked by recreation staff to obtain a permit or pay a permit fee for the community pizza nights that have been hosted at the park. We consider these events as part of our recreation programming offered in partnership with the community. We look forward to a continuation of this program and can assure you there are no plans to change this arrangement.”

But the back story on the use of public bake ovens is a bit more complicated. The city has four parks with ovens: Riverdale, Alexandra, Christie Pits and Dufferin Grove. Only the oven at Alexandra Park was built directly by the City. That oven – built without consulting any of the people who used the other three – is too small and doesn’t work well. The others are public gathering-places around food, as they were meant to be. However, the Parks department has given signs in the past three years that they don’t want any more ovens. A policy was created, again without any user-consultation, that would have made it much more cumbersome to use the ovens. The policy was then stalled by the protest of oven users who heard about it. Apparently it still sits on a shelf somewhere in Etobicoke.

Neighbourhoods that wanted to add an oven to their park have been told that no new ovens are being approved (even with outside funding) before the policy is in place. And that’s where it sits, three years later. Meantime, from time to time, park supervisors have created rules that make it harder to use the ovens, or have suggested public ovens are unsafe to use.

Catherine Porter wrote to the dufferingrovefriends list: “It seems Janet Davis has not spoken to either the Friends of Christie Pits or the parks staff there. Her source is Malcolm Bromley. I am very sure that the Friends were given this message from the people running the program. Now, whether the people running the program were mistaken, I don't know.... What I do know is the Friends of Christie Pits have since been told they will not need to get a permit or pay for park staff .... That's the good news.” Time to talk about ovens, together.

Media 2009

posted on March 13, 2009

Montreal's wood stove ban: a lot of hot air

By: NEIL REYNOLDS
Published: March 11, 2009
Source: The Globe and Mail

Montreal proposes to ban the installation of most kinds of wood stoves and wood fireplaces in new houses – but to let people keep using the 50,000 wood stoves and wood fireplaces already in use. This is as rational as banning the purchase of new cars but letting people continue driving gas guzzlers.

In either case, you deny the environmental advances inherent in technological innovation and preserve the more primitive and wasteful technology of the past. In contrast, Revelstoke, B.C., offers $500 rebates to people who dump old stoves for new, efficient stoves. Both cities can't be right.

Montreal justifies its reactionary stance, in part, with scary rhetoric based on scary federal statistics.

Environment Canada asserts, for example, that a conventional wood stove, burning for nine hours, emits as much particulate matter – known historically as soot – as a car driven 18,000 kilometres. It asserts that an advanced-technology wood stove, burning for 60 hours, emits the same accumulation of particulate matter. Yet it recommends wood heat as “safe, economical and efficient.”

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