friends of dufferin grove park
August 2004 Newsletter

In this issue:


Jutta and Alvaro
A Market Farm Visit

Jutta and Alvaro on Plan B Organics' farm
Read the Weekly Notes

revision posted August 19, 2004

WE'RE IN THE HOLE BUT GETTING OUT:

On August 4, we had a budget shock - we found out that we've spent too much on staffing the park this summer.James Dann, the manager for Parks and Recreation in the west part of the city, told us the unhappy budget numbers, and the news travelled through the park and the neighbourhood and the farmers' market e-mail list: the park is broke. The more this park turns into a community-centre-without walls, the more ingenious we have to be to make it work without a community-centre budget. This year the ingenuity wasn't enough. What remedy?

First, we have to pass the hat. This is people's chance to give the park a donation. In the week since we found out the bad news, we've been getting a steady stream of checks and bills and so we've already been able to pay off some arrears. As of August 17, we'd passed the $3000 mark in direct donations, and park food had raised another $3000. As of the end of the month, if all goes well, all summer staff back wages will have been paid — whew! — AND we'll only have to end the summer park season a few days early. If there's a late heat wave we'll find a way to stay open, even if it needs volunteer help. We still need to collect about $1000 (down from $7000!). All donations are appreciated. $25 is nice and so is $50. A few kind souls have given even more, and grandparents haven't been shy either. Donations can be handed to the park staff. Cheques should be made out to the "Friends of Dufferin Grove Park." To mail: c/o 242 Havelock St. Toronto M6H 3B9.

Second, don't shoot the messenger. Parks and Recreation manager James Dann tells us he's had some irate phone calls asking him why he wants to ruin this really nice park. The fact is, James doesn't ruin the park, he helps out as much as he can. But he has no money to add into the budget - those decisions have to be made at another level.

Third, we have to make sure this passing the hat is a one-time event ONLY. That means, doing some politics before the next budget is set. We have to see if the Parks Department can recognize our park as a genuine community centre, cheaper to run than an indoor centre, but with just as many people using it, in all seasons except the mud months of March and November. As a comparison between our park and other places: the budget for staffing and operating the two nearest community recreation centres, Wallace-Emerson and McCormick, is around $1.2 million a year. It's hard to compare us with another park because even though the city has been trying for four years to make their computer accounting specific to each location, they haven't succeeded yet. James Dann is working with us to find out the real cost of running Kew Gardens Park, in the Beaches, a showplace park twice the size of ours, which is also very heavily used and also has an outdoor rink. We don't need as much as they have (whatever it turns out to be), but we need more than the $80,000 assigned to us ($120,000 would be plenty). Otherwise this experiment in making a community centre without walls will fade away again.

This fall is your chance, folks, to make the city aware of your views. If you want there to be community centres without walls like this park, call City Councillor Adam Giambrone at 416 392-7012 (e-mail: Councillor_Giambrone@toronto.ca). Or call the Mayor's office, or the city councillor in your area, if you live at a distance. At the same time, call acting Parks and Recreation general manager Brenda Librecz at 416 392-8182 (e-mail blibrecz@toronto.ca). You can also call our park's area manager, James Dann (who has often been helpful and supportive of what goes on here), at 416 392-1122 (e-mail jdann@toronto.ca). To find out more about the nuts and bolts of how Dufferin Grove Park runs (and how we got in this trouble, and how people are helping), read the Finances pages, or call the park at 416 392-0913.

HELP FOR THE PARK:

SUNDAY AUGUST 15: THE GREAT PICNICTABLE PAINTING

One of the ways we spent too much money this summer was by using some summer staff hours to paint picnic tables. The problem is, there is no (zero) money in the Toronto parks budget for fixing and painting park furniture. There's not even anyone who keeps track of which tables or benches need care. But when paint starts to peel off, the wood rots faster, so maintenance is important. Park friend Michelle Webb organized a wonderfully successful painting day, with pizza at the oven. Suchada Promchiri donated brushes, the Parks Department donated paint, and whole families came to paint. They painted 13 tables, 3 benches, and 2 chairs. (Wow!) Some little kids painted in their underwear and washed their green-daubed bodies at the sand pit afterwards. The tables will last much longer now.

SUNDAY AUGUST 15: BENEFIT PERFORMANCE

Stranger Theatre (the folks who did the Cooking Fire Theatre Festival in the park in June) has some current and former park staff in it. Current staff Dalal Badr and former staff Lea Ambros and Kyle Cameron were in the Stranger Theatre production of The Counterfeit Marquise at this year's Summerworks Festival. They finished their last show on Sunday afternoon and then they did one park performance on Sunday evening as a gift to the park. This way they raised $140 for us. Their shadow-puppet play with music and narration was poetical and philosophical but despite (or even because of) this, the children at the performance looked spellbound for every moment of the 40-minute show. A wonderful chance, too, to see Dalal Badr perform while she's still unknown (she just graduated from the National Theatre School in Montreal). In years to come, we can say we knew a great actress when she worked at the food cart and Friday Night Supper.

THE POTTERS CAME BACK: August 16,17,18

Every few years, potter David Windle, a long-time friend of the park, sets up a portable kiln in the open air at Dufferin Grove Park and makes raku pottery with his friend Judi Gillies (and other potter friends). It's very interesting to watch, and David is a wonderful explainer as they're all working. He says that "raku" - a Japanese style of glazing and firing pots that makes them look darkly iridescent - means "happiness." This year they set up near the bake oven on Monday August 16, Tuesday August 17, and Wednesday August 18. They did various glazing experiments and David worked on refining his portable kiln. People came by to watch and admire (or sometimes commiserate) as the pots and statuary came red hot from the kiln and were dunked into the raku-ashes. For information about their "raku happiness" evens, you can call David at 416 461-8425 or Judi at 416 537-6872.

LILITH RETURNS TO THE PARK: AUGUST 20,21,22

The park's resident giant puppet theatre company, Clay and Paper Theatre, has been performing this year's play "Lilith: the True Story of the First Wife of Adam" in different parks all over the city this summer. To end their run, they're returning for three more performances in Dufferin Grove Park. Performances start at 7.30; food is available at the park bake oven from 6.45 (Friday night supper is at 6.30 on Aug. 20).

Lilith incorporates some of the company's huge, magnificent puppets from previous productions and some new puppets as well. There is lots of original music, and the lights in the trees make the colours of the puppets glow.

THE PARK GARDENS

After the Parks Department removed the last flowerbed from the park in 1993, various people in the neighbourhood began to plant gardens (with city permission) so the park wouldn't be only grass and trees. The first flowerbed was put in near the sand pit by Ann Shaddick and friends, to make the children's area more friendly. Everyone worried that the parks staff would take offense. But they didn't. A backhoe operator helped by dumping some dirt when he was excavating the sand pit, and Carol Cormier, who was the parks supervisor then, surprised us with a few flats of annuals that just appeared.

Since then, many more gardens have gone in, as people were moved to plant. Rob Rennick planted the first perennial bed in 1994, with help from park kids and from a crew of youthful gangsters whom we hired that year. Lily Weston, the first person who staffed the park as though it was a community centre, planted long rows of sweet peas along the rink chain link fence. Margie Rutledge, one of the founding friends of the park, made the first herb garden near the oven, bordered by bricks from Cherry Beach.

Soon after, Arie Kamp came to the park and started his many, many garden projects, mainly with seeds that he gathered at his favourite flowerbeds all over the city. For five years, Arie was a more than full-time unpaid gardener at the park, often starting his work at 5 a.m. or even earlier, when the weather was hot and dry. Arie has now scaled back to just doing his experiments with morning glories along both the chain link fences at the hockey rink. On the many cloudy days this summer, the morning glories have stayed open long past morning - anyone who loves flowers should go have a look if you haven't yet. You can pick some of Ben Figueiredo's grapes on the same chain link fence.

At a community meeting in 1992 when we began to change the park, many people said there should be native plant areas. For that, we got two Canada Trust Friends of the Environment grants, in 1995 and 1996, one for $4000 and one for $5000. We were a bit puzzled about how to plant native-species beds until Gene Threndyle discovered our park. (He says he was playing a game of frisbee with friends and he ran into the bake oven trying to catch one, which alerted him to the fact that this park was unusual.) Gene, who grew up on a farm near Walkerton, is both an artist and a landscaper, and he supervised the planting of four native-species areas. Then he applied for and got an Ontario Arts Council grant so he could do a fifth area, the present marsh garden with the fountain near Dufferin Street.

A few years ago, Caitlin Shea discovered the park and joined in taking care of the various gardens. She also put effort into finding other volunteers for the gardens, and this year Reema, Klaudia, Catherine, and Jeremy have been steadfast garden friends. Jenny Cook is the main staff person who has put time into the gardens, with help from Jessica Moore (who planted a great deal when she returned to work after her dear companion Galen Kuellmer died in a bicycle accident this past May) and also with help from summer staff Nina Gilmour, Tristana Martin Rubio, and Tom Mills (who may have a green thumb from his mother Beth, a bit of a gardening legend in the neighbourhood as well as being principal of Dewson School). Beyond that, there are secret gardeners who just show up and weed or add plants when nobody is looking.

The latest Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan calls for more trees to be planted all over the city including in parks, and that prompted us to walk around and list the kinds of trees and shrubs that people have planted in the native species gardens. There are lots, and they are getting very tall and lush. Here's our list: Black walnut (one of them with 4 walnuts, fist-time-ever), wild plum (covered with plums), aspen, spice bush, dogwood, hazelnut, elderberry, winterberrry, Eastern white cedar, striped maple, choke cherry, meadowsweet, hackberry, sugar maple, high bush cranberry, black willow (planted anonymously), Eastern white pine, tamarack, black oak, poplar, and red cedar. And here are some of the flowers: Joe Pye weed, asters, fireweed, black-eyed Susan, rudbeckia, touch-me-not, swamp rose, Indian cup plant, vervain, Jerusalem Artichoke, milkweed, wild clematis, bergamot, rye grass, grey-headed coneflower, wild rose. There is also, of course, wild raspberry, and this year it has lots of berries to eat. There used to be wild strawberries, but they have disappeared this year. (If they don't reappear next year, maybe we'll re-plant them).

Anyone who would like to help garden, please call the park at 416 392-0913, and leave a message for Caitlin Shea.

In the next newsletter we'll list the non-native perennials, grapes, fruit trees, and vegetables. One more important thing about the gardens: this year, for the first time, the park maintenance worker has been picking trash out of the gardens when he comes through our park. Joe Eschweiler does not follow the previous maintenance-crew practice of ignoring any community garden areas as though they were a different land. The whole park looks cleaner this year, the gardens too.

THE $803,000 LIST

The last time city council met, at the end of July, a group of us tried (and failed) to interest city council in stopping a "facility-audit" for Parks and Recreation, that will cost over $800,000. To do an audit, the city gets inspectors to go from place to place checking roofs and walls and wiring and water lines, etc., and writing down what shape everything is in. The inspectors write down what needs repair now and what may need repair or replacement later, up to a period of 25 years, making a separate, detailed report for every facility owned by Parks and Recreation. The last such inventory was ordered by the Policy and Planning Division of the Economic Development and Parks Department in 2001. As an example of the level of detail in that audit, the Dufferin Rink report runs to ten pages. When we studied the 2001 audit a few months ago, we were amazed to find that (1) none of the audit's recommendations for our rink had been carried out and (2) not one of the things that did in fact go wrong with our rink was predicted by this audit. To be fair, there is a severe shortage of money in the budget to maintain existing city facilities, so if a repair is not an emergency, it often gets postponed year after year. As for not being able to anticipate the things that did go wrong, forecasting things accurately is tough. So we thought, live and learn. Audits don't work that well; now, let's just get on with fixing what's broken, piece by piece.

To our astonishment, we found out recently that the Policy and Development Division had asked for another $803,000 to do a repeat audit of exactly the same facilities, only three years after the first one. They said that they need some more details. But when we looked over their plans we discovered that the new details they want this time are not very different from the old details.

We tried pretty hard to interest the Economic Development and Parks Committee (elected city councillors) in taking another look at this scheme before they approved it. No luck at all. Then we tried to interest city council in delaying their final approval. No luck there either. Councillor Adam Giambrone decided not to raise the matter at the council meeting because he was sure no one would support him. And indeed, the $803,000 expenditure passed in an eyeblink.

Why does this concern us so much? Because at the same time as $803,000 is spent on making more lists, picnic tables will not be repaired when they break. Muddy park paths will not be paved. Summer staff will be short at city wading pools. Many of the other things that actually make parks work well will not get done.

It seems that the same folks from the Policy and Development Division who called for this repeat audit are also responsible for persuading the city to spend - so far - over $6 million for some very extensive, and dubious, playground replacements.

Now, the interesting thing about money for these sorts of special projects (called "capital projects") is that the city is allowed to borrow it. The city doesn't have to be restrained, in the short run, by how much money we have. Of course, since borrowed money has to be paid back with interest, that means the pain is drawn out, and multiplied, over years. But for now, we can have projects like this second facility audit in three years, or the replacement of good existing playgrounds with new boring ones, on credit.

This comes back around to the problem of broken picnic tables at our park and too few park staff at other parks. The interest on any money the city borrows for capital projects like an $803,000 duplicate audit, or $6 million of inferior playgrounds, is paid out of the operating budget. Every year, many millions of tax dollars that could help run parks, fix roads, buy zambonis, or staff summer playgrounds - are used instead to pay interest on the city's debt. And it's our impression that the Policy and Development Division is rewarded for any projects that are approved, by getting a percentage of the capital money to put into their operating budget.

The follow-up research group that works out of the park (CELOS) has been trying to find out more about this. But city hall is a secretive place, and sadly, that seems not to have changed with the election of Mayor David Miller. We've recently discovered that there is an order from the city administration to answer NONE of our follow-up group's questions directly, but to insist that every question be made as a formal request through the city's Corporate Access and Privacy office. And when we filed those requests, we found that the answers were very rarely released within the required 30 days. In some cases, answers are so overdue that we now have to visit the province's Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, and have a talk.

So that's another thing to follow up on. Sigh. One of our research group said - you have to have stamina to track down what you want to know from the city. It's a modern kind of work-out - flexing your follow-up muscles, over and over, until you develop a well-toned tracking technique.

COMING UP IN SEPTEMBER:

Annual Morris Dancers' "Ale": Morris dancers from all over the city and other parts of the province and the U.S. gather by the oven to show each other their latest dances, eat pizza and bread and drink ale. This event is just for the dancers but they don't mind at all if an audience gathers. Sunday September 5, usually around 3 or 4 p.m., usually with the C.N.E. air show thundering overhead.

Annual Havelock/Gladstone-and neighbourhood Street Festival, Saturday September 11, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The festival begins with a community lawn sale at the east side of the park along Havelock Street at 10 a.m. (bring your stuff; no charge); then free hot dogs on Havelock Street at noon, then kids' games from 2 to 3; then potluck supper at the pizza oven (and pizza-making) at 6.30; then cake-walk at 7.30, then square dancing on the rink at 8. Organized, as usual, by Liz Martin and friends. Everyone welcome, wherever you live in the neighbourhood.


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:Henrik Bechmann, Joe Adelaars, Caitlin Shea

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