Volume 6 Number 12, December 2005

Comments? editor@dufferinpark.ca

DUFFERIN RINK FINALLY OPENS: SATURDAY DECEMBER 3, 9 A.M.

Two weeks after Harbourfront Rink, one week after City Hall, the city is finally opening the first handful of its 47 neighbourhood outdoor compressor-run ice rinks. We’re on the list because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but we’re hoping that this winter there will be squeaky wheels all over the city, signing a big petition for City Councillors. Winter starts up in November, and at least some neighborhood rinks should be open by the third week in November, in every part of the city!

Dufferin Rink hours are: seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., (shinny hockey permits and overflow shinny hockey until 11 p.m., see the shinny schedule at the centre of this newsletter). After 11 p.m. the gates are locked.

The “Zamboni Café” snack bar will be serving even better food than last year; the wood stove will be going and the kids’ storybooks are on the shelf beside it; the zamboni’s snow hills will begin to grow beside the basketball court, for climbing and making snow sculptures; the campfire will be lit outside by the rink every weekend, with benches all around; the NHL Player’s Association skates have all been sharpened and are ready to lend; Mayssan’s skating lessons will be offered again, with a hockey option for those who want – ahhh, winter at the park.

HAND-MADE GIFT SALE:
RINK HOUSE, SUNDAY DECEMBER 4, NOON TO 4 P.M.

Long-time park friend Carolin Taron has put together the third annual Handmade Gift Sale
at Dufferin Grove Park, in the rink house. She writes: “Find unique gifts and support local artisans: jewelry, ceramics, paintings, calendars, magic bath salts, cards, collage art and more.“  Carolin says the gift sale is also a “celebration of the handmade life.”

The rink snack bar will be selling two calendars at the gift sale, as a park fundraiser: the 2006 Toronto Parks and Trees calendar, and the Sumach Press 2006 Women’s Daybook. The actual calendars are not handmade, of course, but each was created with the help of park friends: the tree calendar photographs are by Geoffrey James (see story  on p.7), and the daybook was put together and published by Liz Martin (who organizes the Havelock-and-neighbourhood street fair every year), and her colleagues at Sumach Press.

Carolin’s gift fair will enliven the rink house on its first weekend of finally being open. Some of the vendors will be near a campfire outside, some indoors. There will be hot cider and lots of warming food at the snack bar, and the staff can help skaters store the gifts they buy in a safe lock-up until they’re ready to leave, if they’re bigger than the change house lockers.

MEDIA WATCH: IS THE PARK RUN BY VOLUNTEERS?

From time to time there is some news about the park in the papers. Last month it popped up in both the Globe and Mail and the National Post, and NOW Magazine ran a piece by park regular Mike Smith with the colourful title “Dufferin Grove all fired up: Parks and rec pitch to set up procedures and committees gets tossed by vibrant anarcho hive.”  

Smith reported on the puzzlement among the people who almost filled St.Mary’s High School cafeteria on Nov.7, many of them asking why the City had called this meeting. His article also gave a good rundown on the benefits or drawbacks of various volunteer structures for running a park.

What was not discussed at the meeting – and therefore not evident in the NOW article – is the fact that Dufferin Grove Park is not run by volunteers. It’s run by park staff, i.e. 12 part-timers now that the winter season has begun. In general the park staff try to work so closely with park users that when somebody like Georgie Donais comes along and offers to build a cob courtyard, their answer is: How can we help make it happen?

And not only big projects get that treatment from the park staff. The staff are nosy enough as a group, that almost any approach, any idea, can be tried out as an experiment, if it has a champion (adult or child) and if the time is right. But since the park also has its regular seasons and routines and programs, “anarchy” is not a very apt description of their work most of the time.

Recreation supervisor Tino DeCastro, and his manager James Dann and a small list of other city staff, collaborated with an outsider, Jutta Mason, over years to allow the existing staff culture to develop. The leading idea for the park was friendship: how can people find friends in a city of so many strangers? How can public space become a place of introduction, where neighbours can watch and become familiar with one another across class, race, money or age boundaries? How can a park be staffed in such a way that neighborly gifts can be magnified?

The answer is, with a lot of clean-up work, day after day. The busier the park gets, the more messes there are to deal with, both of litter and of human troubles.  The park staff work hard to create and keep an orderly park, for the various neighborhood dramas to play out. Keeping the park sweet is a task resembling an iceberg, with only the tip being obvious but a big support section underneath where you can’t see it very well. The staff’s work ranges from cleaning the toilets to programming the web site, and from cooking huge suppers to going to court for vandalism follow-up.  Often the staff have to run pretty fast to keep up, but they usually seem to be cheerful anyway. It’s good work! And their close collaboration with park users is often surprising and interesting.

Sometimes the park staff are a bit mystified, though, when they hear talk about how the park is run by volunteers. It isn’t. That’s the beauty of taxes: one way to put taxes to good use is to pay people for doing good work.

DUFFERIN 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)
9 TO 11 P.M. SEASONAL AND SINGLE-OCCASION PERMITS ON HOCKEY SIDE, PICK-UP SHINNY ON PLEASURE-SKATING SIDE, RINK HOUSE CLOSED
    Saturday
9:00am - 12:00pm all ages (skating lessons on the pleasure-skating side)
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)
    Sunday
9:00am - 4.45 p.m No shinny hockey. Pleasure skating both sides.
5  - 6 p.m. family shinny on hockey side (registered program, but free, call 392-0913)
6 - 7.30 p.m. Adult learn-to-play-shinny permit
7.30 to 8.45 p.m.  SINGLE-OCCASION SHINNY PERMIT
9 - 11 p.m. seasonal permit hockey side, open shinny pleasure-skating side

New: Women’s open shinny, Tuesdays 9-11p.m.

SINGLE-OCCASION SHINNY PERMITS are available Fridays and Saturdays 9 p.m. - 11 p.m., and Sundays 7:30 to 9 p.m. For adults, the single-occasion permits cost $79.00. For children and youth, there is no charge. To book a permit, e-mail mayssan@dufferinpark.ca. or call the rink.   RINK PHONE NUMBER: 416 392-0913

HOLIDAY HOURS: Christmas Eve: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., rink pads open until 11 p.m. Christmas Day: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m, rink pads open to 11 p.m. Boxing Day: regular hours. New Year’s Eve: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., rink pads open to 11 p.m. New Year’s Day: regular hours.

FOOD IN THE PARK

Friday Night Suppers have resumed (6 to 7.30 p.m. on Fridays at the rink house, $6 for the main plate, no reservations necessary, $1 less if you bring your own dishes). Also, seven days a week, the “Zamboni Café” snack bar will be serving substantial winter soups, sandwiches with park oven bread, organic hot dogs, mini-pizzas, and various sweets including park cookies. On weekends there may be more.

The price list at the Zamboni café reflects how much money we need to pay for the materials that went into the food, plus a bit extra for other park uses. But if your grocery money is tight, but you and your kids are hungry after skating, even the cheap snack bar food prices may add up too fast.

If you’re hungry, but you can’t pay as much for the snack bar food, pay less. Park staff also like to do trades – if you can do something for the park (help shovel after a snowstorm, wash dishes, sort tools in the tool cupboard, break up wooden skids for the bread ovens) the park staff will tell you your money won’t work at the snack bar, and you have to eat for free. That goes for kids too.

On the other hand, if you find the food very cheap and good and think it should cost more, pay more. Every penny goes to the park.

THE RINK CLUSTER: THREE RINKS INSTEAD OF ONE

Shinny hockey seems to be more popular every year, for both sexes and all ages.  Dufferin Rink has far more permit requests than it can accommodate. That’s because until 9 p.m. it’ s only got public skating and can’t be rented out to clubs, parties, film companies, schools, or for any other exclusive use.  So the only times we have for permits are from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. (except Tuesdays in that time slot, which is for women’s open shinny).  But there are two other fine rinks very nearby – Wallace Rink (at Dufferin and Dupont) and Campbell Rink (at Wallace and Campbell) – and this year we’ve joined forces. As of this writing, there are still shinny hockey permits available at both rinks, both seasonal and single-occasion.  Contact Manny Silva to book them: msilva2@toronto.ca, or call and leave him a message at 416 392-0913.

Wallace Rink was due to be rebuilt in the spring of 2006, but because there were no plans to improve the rink’s awkward change area, the project has been postponed until there can be community consultation. Dufferin Rink staff want to help Wallace rink staff with that. Jess Moore and Sarah Cormier have painted the existing building blueprints on the Wallace Rink change room walls, to help focus ongoing discussion. All winter long, rink staff will be talking to rink users about their ideas – how to rebuild Wallace Rink so it will work better.  There will be a model to work on, for rink users to alter to suit. (Fun for kids, too). There will be hockey-movie evenings and campfires with marshmallows sometimes, and Dufferin Rink cookies. Come down and skate.

CITYWIDE INFORMATION FOR COMPRESSOR-RUN OUTDOOR RINKS

The Dufferin Rink phone has been ringing off the hook since the middle of November because it’s also the unofficial city outdoor rink hotline. The official city rink hotline is just a long recorded message, still only partly updated from last year, and the city’s web site rink information is pretty limited.

Three years ago the park staff offered to have the Dufferin Rink phone number given out on the city rink recording as a live information source for “inclement weather.” By now, enough skaters must have posted this number on their fridge that they call Dufferin Rink in all  weathers, eager to talk to a real person. Our park staff give out the actual phone numbers of specific rinks when they’re not sure about ice conditions there. That’s a help,  because the City has gradually de-listed all the individual rink phone numbers from the phone book since amalgamation, for reasons that are unclear. It can be very frustrating to get all bundled up, maybe with kids too, and arrive at your neighbourhood outdoor rink only to find the snow hasn’t been cleared off yet. So skaters are very appreciative to have our rink staff to talk to when they need up-to-date information.

Another way to get good outdoor rink information is to go to the “city rinks” page of our park web site (www.dufferinpark.ca, click on “city rinks”). This shows maps and rink details (including phone numbers) for 27 individual rinks. Henrik Bechmann, our webmaster, is training many of the rink staff to post information on our web site, so this winter they’ll increase the number of outdoor rinks posted there.

At this point, the City is unwilling to link our park web site’s rink information to the city’s official web site. But the good news is that both the local park supervisors and the city-wide rink manager, James Dann, have supported the Dufferin Rink staff’s unofficial efforts to make rink information easier to find.  As of March, however, James is reassigned to a different area in the current re-structuring of Parks, Forestry and Recreation. Under the new system, no city manager has been specifically assigned responsibility for the outdoor rinks yet. So the city’s $60 million-worth of outdoor compressor-run neighbourhood rinks are in limbo – not an unusual state of affairs over the years, but one that should end.

Reporter (and shinny hockey player) Peter Kuitenbrouwer wrote an article for the National Post about the delayed rink openings this year. He quoted Parks, Forestry and Recreation general manager Brenda Librecz in his piece. She told him that she gets more e-mails about keeping rinks open into March than about opening rinks when the weather gets cold at the end of November. (So most city rinks don’t open until December 10 this year.)

Ideally, rink decisions would be based not as much on e-mails to the general manager, as on collaboration between experienced rink staff, a knowledgeable manager, and rink users. But for the present, rink users would do well to e-mail the general manager: blibrecz@toronto.ca. Ask her to find an enthusiastic rink manager for her new system, to encourage him to collaborate with experienced rink staff and rink users, and to give her or him the capacity to act on their advice. If rink users prefer to make contact by phone, the general manager’s office number is 416 392-8207.

COB COURTYARD NEWS, AND CALL FOR “EYES ON THE COB”

The cob courtyard has been the target of some vandalism, first from an unknown hand in early October, then from a young man who was arrested, on October 31, and most recently from two students in St.Mary’s Catholic High School uniforms one afternoon after school let out. After the first episode, Heidrun Gabel-Koepff repaired much of the damage by re-plastering. After the second episode on Hallowe’en night, park staff contacted the police and the Crown and have begun to work on getting standing at the young man’s trial in February. After the third episode, Jutta Mason visited the very friendly new principal at St.Mary’s, Mr.Adrian Della Mora. He said he would make an announcement to all the students about respecting the park and upholding the honour of the school. He also asked that any bad behaviour by his students in the park be reported right away.

Since then the cob courtyard has been unmolested. But if any dog walkers or other park users see anyone damaging any park property, please ask them to stop. (Nice but firm works well most of the time. With the real goofs, shouting and making a scene can work wonders of embarrassment.)

The cob courtyard will often be lit up with white lights this winter, especially when it snows. There have been many fires in the cob fireplace during the fall: permits continue to be free and the staff will supply wood. Call the park if you want to book: 416 392-0913.

PARK TREES, OLD AND NEW

From park friend Robert Fones:

“The morning after the first snowstorm of the winter, I was walking my dog in the area of the park just north of the playground when I heard a creaking sound coming from a tree beside me. I could see a split in the trunk of a big maple running from between the two main branches to the ground. The tree was on the verge of splitting in half and falling on unsuspecting passersby. I borrowed Janet Cowan’s cell phone to call 911. The fire department arrived within minutes and secured the area with yellow caution tape. An Urban Forestry crew arrived shortly thereafter and spent most of the day cutting down much of one of the oldest trees in the park. It does point out the fact that the trees in the park are old. New ones need to be planted to replace this aging forest. Otherwise, the old trees will go and the new trees will all be eight feet tall.”

He’s right, for sure. This past year the City’s Forestry staff took two walks around the park and said they’d try to do some planting next spring. In case that gets delayed, we planted four small silver maples already, at the south edge of the wading pool. These were self-seeded backyard maples – not hard to find. Donations of more little trees are welcome, and they’re easy to plant. No Norway maples, please – it was a Norway maple that almost cracked in two and fell on Robert – they’re non-native, and when they get old, their unusually large branches can split off more easily and fall very hard.

SKATING LESSONS WITH MAYSSAN:
FIRST DAY IS WEDNESDAY DEC.15

Wednesdays 5 p.m. Beginner, 6 p.m. Intermediate
Thursdays  5 p.m. Beginner, 6 p.m. Intermediate
Fridays  4 p.m.  Pre Beginner, 5 p.m. Beginner, 6 p.m. Adult Classes
Saturdays 9:30 a.m.  Pre beginner, 10:30 a.m. Pre beginner, 11:30 a.m. Beginner, 12:30 p.m. Intermediate
Classes are all 45 minutes long and will run for 12 weeks @ $85 per child or adult (keeping in mind the possibility of bad weather days and early rink closures from the City). Some scholarships are available.  To find out more or sign up, call Mayssan at 416 392-0913, or e-mail her at Mayssan@dufferinpark.ca.

OUR PARK IS IN THE TREE PORTRAITS CALENDAR

The Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation, which helped fund the cob courtyard project (and before that helped us get the current park web site started) puts out a very handsome “Tree portraits” desk calendar, showing many old giants from various Toronto parks. In the 2006 version a Dufferin Grove Park red elm is featured for the month of June. The photographer is Geoffrey James – who is not only internationally renowned but who lives in this neighbourhood. He and his wife buy their food at the farmers’ market. Small world! The text comments about our park, by Pleasance Crawford, hit the nail on the head about the need to plant young trees in this park. She has many interesting things to say about all the parks and the different trees, and there’s a foreword from Margaret Atwood. It’s a thoughtful, intelligent calendar with luminous black-and-white tree pictures that you can get lost in. No wonder that last year the calendar sold out early. If you want to place a Christmas order, the Parks and Trees Foundation phone number is 416 397-5178. (And the money will go to other good projects in Toronto parks.) Better yet, you can buy the calendar from the park staff at the Hand-made gift sale in the rink house on Sunday December 4.

THE FARMERS’ MARKET: EVERY THURSDAY 3 TO 7 P.M., INSIDE THE RINK HOUSE

The farmers still have lots of their own harvest, and throughout the winter they’re allowed to import organic produce from California too.  There’s lots of prepared food as well, plus tasty park bread and snacks. Leave yourself extra time when you go there because it’s also a place where neighbours run into each other and news is exchanged. To get on the weekly market news e-list, contact market manager Anne Freeman (leave her a message at the park or e-mail her at market@dufferinpark.ca).