friends of dufferin grove park
Maintenance Stories from our newsletters

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[Sept.2001] Vandalism in the park:

This has been another year of very little vandalism in the park, with one exception – the area by the wading pool and the playground. The bulletin board was knocked over, the checker table trampled, the locks on the rain shelter benches twisted and broken, and there was lots of broken glass. (Much of the damage was repaired by playground volunteer Fidel Perez with the help of the summer staff.)

It turned out that a new group of young (Portuguese and Spanish?) drinkers had established themselves beside the wading pool this summer, and even though they were rather pleasant when sober, they constantly did stupid things when they drank too much (which was often). Despite four or five talks with them, there was no lessening of the damage. Then one morning the staff had to spend an hour and a half carefully picking up broken glass at the side of the wading pool. That was the last straw.

Late that night, Jutta Mason went to the playground and asked about thirty young fellows, in three different groups, to get up and leave the playground area and never party there any more, not one more time. To her surprise, they all got up and moved elsewhere in the park. In the following week they returned only twice, and although they argued each time, they got up and left when asked. The rule now is, in Dufferin Grove Park, nobody parties in the playground, period. If you're sitting in the playground with your friends and there's even one bottle, you move elsewhere in the park.

If anyone sees this rule being broken, please remind the young people and ask them to move to elsewhere in the park. Chances are, they will. If they refuse, please leave a message on the rink house phone to report

[April 2002] Salt on the sidewalks

This was a very light year for snow, of course, but there were a few snowfalls. The day after the last snowfall in March, it was so warm and windy that the snow all melted and the sidewalks were bare and dry by noon. But the sidewalk to the north of the park was still white – with salt, drifts of it, little heaps of it, the whole length of the sidewalk from Havelock to Gladstone. The dog walkers noticed it first, because their dogs limped and whimpered, from the salt burns on their feet. The dog owners talked to other people in the park, and there was lots of grumbling about the salt going into the ground and down the sewers into the lake. An e-mail went to Mike Hindle, the park's maintenance supervisor. He wrote back the next day, apologizing. He said there seemed to have been either "equipment or operator error" involved, and the Parks crew had come back and swept up the extra salt.

It was true – the whole length of the sidewalk was swept and only a little powder remained.

If you are a person who worries about excessive salt on roads and sidewalks in Toronto, let city workers know. For more information about whom to contact, and how, send an e-mail to the neighbourhood list serve: it's a great way to find out things, because somebody always seems to know the answer you're looking for.

[May 2002] Old benches into new: The "Legacy in our Neighbourhood" project.

A month ago the park staff went around and catalogued the park benches to see which ones needed repair or painting. Of 51 benches, over 30 needed work – not because of vandalism, but just the wear and tear of a busy park. Since then, the park maintenance crew have been busy replacing broken slats with good slats and bracing lop-sided-benches with new pegs, to make them stand up straight. But the city's bench budget is strained at the moment, and lots of benches still look a bit rough.

Some help is at hand, though. Mary Thorne, marketing manager at the Dufferin Mall, called up to tell us that the mall is co-sponsoring a project called "Legacy in our neighbourhood." Funded by the Ontario Arts Council, it allows two artists to set up a workshop in a storefront at the mall, to involve neighbourhood people in making a piece of art for public space. The two artists, Kristen Fahrig and Jeff Chown, want to transform two park benches – to beautifully paint them and carve them with scenes from people's memories and stories of home – and an in-ground mosaic mandala. They are inviting anyone – of any age – from the neighbourhood to come to the mall's "Gallery in Motion" (beside "Bell World") between May 6 and June 9, and work with them on giving shape to this idea. The hours are Monday and Tuesday 4-6, Saturdays 10-12, and Sundays 1-3. Mike Hindle, the park's maintenance supervisor, has given his okay to using the two existing park benches that are in the roughest shape, and Mr.Micelli of the mall's outdoor garden centre has agreed to send over his crew with a fork lift to transport the heavy benches (concrete ends) across the road from the park into the mall, to set them up in the gallery.

Once they're finished, the public-art benches will be returned to our park. So here's your chance to leave your mark in the park, for posterity (people need to sit, after all). The two artists, Kristen Fahrig and Jeff Chown, met, by the way, while working at Spiral Garden (an artist-run children's playground near the Hugh MacMillan Centre, which is the gold standard for all that's inspired and beautiful in playgrounds). And now, here they are, in our own neighbourhood, ready to work with anyone who wants. To find out more, or to register, call Kristen at 416/576-9009.

[June 2003] Park fix-it inventory:

Soccer field: the field was completely re-sodded last fall, the first time in many years. The fences protecting the new grass came down in the last week of May and now the field is playable (it's still a bit bumpy but the park staff say they'll roll it soon). It's used by St. Mary's High School Monday to Friday in the daytime until the third week of June; by the Toronto Eagles Soccer Club Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings plus Saturday until 2.30; and by the Portugal 2004 Soccer Club on Thursday evenings. From 3 p.m. Saturday and all day Sunday, the soccer field is not booked - it's there for community use. Tell your friends.

Cricket: many people in this area love to play cricket. There are cricket pitches at Eglinton Park and Sunnybrook Park, but that's pretty far away. Maybe this is the year we can get a cricket pitch put in at our park. If you want more information about this, call the park and leave a message: 416 392-0913.

Sandbox and sandpit: the maintenance staff brought a bit of new sand for the little playground sandbox and a truckload of sand for the sandpit. The plumbing department fixed the water outlet near the sandpit so that the kids can use it to make their rivers and waterfalls again.

Dirt path: the main path through the park is unpaved, and after the winter it was extremely rutted and bumpy. The maintenance crew have now graded it twice and filled in the channels made by erosion. That means that wheelchairs and strollers can use the path again. It's a stop-gap measure: the real solution is to pave the path (this idea was first suggested by a park commissioner in 1925, and sometime about 20 years ago half the smaller paths in the park were paved). The main walkways in the park should be paved, but there's no money to do it. Grading at least makes the path usable.

Campfire shed/garden shed: the City Property carpenters came and removed the rotten roof and put on a new one, so it doesn't leak any more.

Basketball backstop and hockey rink gate: the Parks Division came and repaired damage done by the case loader during winter storm cleaning.

Playground fence: the maintenance workers came and replaced cedar rails that had been vandalized during the winter, so now the fence is whole again. (Remember that dogs and high school students - during school hours - are not permitted inside the playground enclosure. If you see any, you can ask them to leave, and if they don't leave, please come and get the park staff. The playground is for little kids and their caregivers.)

Marsh fountain: The artist/gardener who built the fountain in the native-species wetland, Gene Threndyle, has altered the fountain slightly to guard against standing water (because of the West Nile virus warnings). So now the fountain's water is moving all the time and no mosquitoes can breed there.

[March-April 2004] -- April 19-25: Mayor David Miller's "Clean Sweep Challenge Week":

An attempt to engage the whole city in litter-picking. In our area, Judy Simutis has co-ordinated a park clean-up with other dog owners in Dufferin Grove Park every spring, for years now. Some of the dog walkers pick up litter every time they go through the park, and the city has maintenance workers who pick park trash twice a week. So the park is not nearly as bad (most of the time) as some of the surrounding lane-ways. Perhaps this year our neighbourhood will rise up and sweep through the lane-ways as well as the parks, removing tons of shredded grocery bags and rusting umbrellas and discarded shoes and dropping them into waiting city trucks. That would be a great day! We would certainly follow up with a celebration pizza lunch at the bake oven.

(At the entry into the Hamburg sewer system in Germany, there is a garbage museum, showing the most outrageous things flushed down the sewer grates – from false teeth to baby carriages. Perhaps we could have a show-and-tell sequel to the clean-up in our neighbourhood, an exhibit of interesting trash laid out on long tables by the rink house….?) Look for posters in the park after mid-April, or check the web site at www.dufferinpark.ca, look under "Neighbourhood." for the Mayor's Cleanup Day page.

Is Park Maintenance Pulling Out of Its Nosedive?
From the June 2004 Newsletter
posted June 5, 2004
Our only path?
The main throughfare through our park is not wheelchair accessible

At the beginning of May, we were tickled to report that things were looking up for park maintenance: we got a half-time worker assigned to the park to pick litter and keep things repaired. It even looked like we might get a fence for the new kitchen garden, although the parks department was out of fence posts for the time being. But we heard they were getting some.

During May this didn't work out so well. By June 1 the fence had not materialized, neither had grass seed to fill in all those bald patches all over the park. Neither had the gaps in the playground fence been fixed. The sand in the playground was still unharrowed and hard, and there were still deep hollows at the bottom of the slide and under the swings (if anybody falls, they really get a jolt). The unpaved dirt track that runs through the park for all those hundreds and hundreds of park users to walk along/push strollers/ride bikes or wheelchairs - was still eroded in places and rutted and just as bumpy as last year (no grader had smoothed it yet). The crooked picnic tables and the benches that were missing slats from last year had stayed exactly that way. The grass was long in places, short in others, and in distress in the centre of the soccer field (already), with holes where the irrigation outlets were.

Our park was not a complete orphan. Park maintenance staff person (and former scout-master) Joe Eschweiler kept picking up the trash, so the park was still cleaner than we're used to from other years. Joe also took a run at the ruts in the Sri Lankan's grass "overball" court (overball is a variation of volleyball) beside the basketball court. He used a lawnmower and a weed-whipper in an ingenious way to even out the ground - and it worked, so hopefully there will be no more twisted ankles for a while. Also, our request for compost and wood chips for the garden volunteers turned up a couple of wheelbarrow-loads of each. We got the gift of a little round table and two stools, cast-offs from Riverdale Farm, and promises of more from a park furniture dump near there. That would be lovely.

But you can't run a park only on promises. On June 2, Roman (the park maintenance foreman) came and walked all around the park to make a to-do list. He said that, even though his crew are overwhelmed with city parks grass-cutting, we'll see some action in the next days and weeks. By the next day the playground fence had been fixed and a couple of broken tables removed (and one repaired). So let's see how this next round of promises work out. Maybe the Parks maintenance crew will follow through.

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