Vol. 6, Nr. 3 — In this issue:
- March skating
- NHL visitors, maybe
- Park heroes
- Events in March
- Sneak preview of summer
- City secrets 2
- Media watch
- Human rights law
SKATING AT THE PARK IN
MARCH
The City is experimenting with keeping nine city outdoor artificial ice rinks open until the end of the Catholic School Board’s March break (March 20). On days when the sun comes out, and it’s not freezing cold, the rink will be locked down until evening. But if the weather helps out by staying cool and cloudy, skating under the open sky at Dufferin Rink will keep going for most of the month. The rink house will be staffed from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., the snack bar will be open, and both rinks will be available for shinny hockey after nine p.m. as usual. (Closing at 11 p.m. every night.) For details on the other rinks that are remaining open, go to the city rinks section of the park web site.
Although the rink compressors will shut down on March 20, if by some quirk of the weather it’s still cold then, we’ll work with anyone who wants to, to keep the rink going as a natural ice rink for at least a few days during the second (public school) week of March break. Call the rink for information: 416 392-0913.
Yellow skates
At the end February, we mailed off a thank-you letter to the National Hockey League Players’ Association, for their magnificent gift of 50 hockey outfits including really good skates. We sent them a Dufferin Rink photo-collage and twelve pages of rink user signatures, some with comments like "we hope you get to play soon" and "the yellow skates are so much fun." We included a copy of the February newsletter, describing how the rink staff put the NHLPA gift into service, spray-painting all the skates and helmets yellow and the sticks and gloves red. We told them how much use the equipment gets.
There is some (probably very small) chance that a few NHL players will come to our rink sometime in March to maybe play a bit of shinny hockey with our rink rats. We’ve been told that Gary Roberts and Kevin Weekes said they could come in March, as did Mike Gartner. The problem seems to be finding a date that everyone can make, when the ice is still in at our rink. Although there are quite a few kids and kids-at-heart at Dufferin Rink who would die of happiness if they got to skate around with some of these hockey greats, realistically it’s a dicey plan, especially when you factor in the uncertainty of March weather. Even so, tell your friends and check the park phone message or get on our rink friends list. (E-mail rink@dufferinpark.ca or get the rink staff to put you on the phone list.) If a visit is planned at short notice, we want to let everyone know. And if some players do come, rink supervisor Brian Green says he’ll send over the brand new zamboni that the City just bought. It’s blue and white.
RINK HOUSE CROWDING
We’ve learned our lesson — special events in the rink house can be a pain. We should stop doing them. Both the ten-year fire permit anniversary on Dec.3 and the Puppets on Ice on Feb.27 made the rink house so crowded that people almost had to pick a number to get in and out of the building. That’s not fun, that’s just annoying. And like so many "special events," the actual events content was somewhat meager in both cases. (In the case of Clay and Paper’s puppets on ice, Director David Anderson had fallen full length on the rink a couple of days before and he was so sore he could hardly walk nor talk nor sing — thankfully he’s getting better now.) The fact is, the ongoing special events at the rink are the people who go there, the everyday (wonderful) shinny hockey games, the good food on Friday nights and weekends, the moonscape snow hills, the fire in the wood stove. So maybe we should stick with those pleasures and save the big events for outdoors where there’s space, when the park is green (spring and summer) or gold (fall).
EVENTS IN MARCH
Thursday March 3, from 5.30 p.m: "Petals and pebbles" ritual and memorial campfire by the rink for Tooker Gomberg, who died one year ago. Tooker, who lived on Havelock Street with his partner Angela before they moved to Halifax, ran for mayor against Mel Lastman when no one else would, and was a sometimes clowning, always passionate environmental activist. Organizers suggest bringing a bowl and spoon for free soup, and drums if you like.
Friday March 4,
6 to 8.30 p.m.: a special artists’-bake-oven Friday Night
Supper, with all funds going to the new bake oven at the Artscape
artists’ co-op at Queen and Crawford. This supper is in honour of Gene
Threndyle, who will build the Artscape oven, and who is also one of
our park’s best friends. Almost every native species garden in our park
had Gene’s help to get started and keep growing. Gene made the
fountain/wetland in the old Garrison Creek river bed beside Dufferin Street. He’s a visual artist whose medium is nature: plants and rocks and water. The park cooks are glad to get the chance to cook a fine meal that will honour Gene and also help buy the materials for
yet another communal bake oven. The regular prices and format of Friday
Night Supper apply (no reservations necessary). [Follow-up note: read Gene's thanks]
Friday March 11, 6 to 8p.m.: a special playground Friday Night Supper with all funds going to buy materials for the traditional cob/straw bale structure that Georgie Donais wants to build (communally) at the playground this spring and summer.
Georgie & Emory with Cobs
Friday March 18, 6 to 8 p.m.: a special gardening Friday Night Supper with all funds going to buy seeds and plants and garden tools for the park gardens. This supper is in honour of our gardeners — Caitlin Shea, Reema Tarzi, Gene Threndyle, Annick Mitchell and Jake Mitchell, Klaudia Meier, Jeremy and Catherine. (And Arie Kamp if we can find him — he has no phone.) It’s also in memory of Ben Figuereido, whose leap off his balcony in December leaves us with only his beautiful grape vines on the chain link fence beside the little oven, to remember him by.
There will be garden films: Isaac Meyer is lending the park his 16mm film projector
so we can run the garden films we inherited when the Public Library
closed down its film department. A 20-minute NFB film of a backyard
garden in Halifax is a particular gem. The films will run continuously
in the zamboni-garage "movie theatre." The regular prices and format of Friday Night Supper apply, and no reservations are necessary.
Tuesday March 22, 1-4 p.m.: March Break Kids' Art class : Mosaic workshop at the rink house, with artists Gillian Tremain and Jeannie Soley. "The kids will each create a beautiful tiled panel, using glass and ceramic tile pieces, as well as any favourite pebbles, beach glass or broken ceramics they'd like to incorporate. Design, composition and technique will all be discussed. We'll have a break halfway through the afternoon for hot chocolate and cookies (while the glue dries on the mosaics), then the kids will learn how to grout their own artwork as a final step in the process." Twelve children maximum, ages 6 to 12 ; cost will be $30 plus a $10 materials fee, with payment in full by cash or cheque the day of the class. To register, e-mail Gillian at : gabhangi@ca.inter.net or call 416-532-0773 and leave a message.
Saturday March 26 at 12 noon: at the fire circle by the small oven: "Elder Sages, Spiritual Guides and Guardians of the sacred Otomí and Indigenous Drums will appear and play their Sacred Drums to the Four Directions of Mother Earth, thereby attaining unity in diversity and communally receiving the Healing Energy of the Great Spirit and the Cosmos. In order to take part in this Indigenous Ceremony, bring your Sacred Drums, your Native Nation, Indigenous People or Community; bring the Sacred Drum from your Ceremonial Cultural or Educational Center or the Sacred Drum of your Family, Group, Council, Collective or Association; you may also bring the drum of your heart."
THIS MONTH’S PARK HEROES
…..the City’s Property Department’s electrical
foreperson Al Berney, who was successful in finding us the
scarce replacement lights for our donated (and now discontinued) track
lights inside the rink house — the main room is once again beautifully
lit
……the homeschoolers who gather at the playground on Thursdays
in the summer and who decided, out of the blue, to give the park a $75
donation, delivered in February by Stefani Brown (we
bought seeds from Colette Murphy, and dirt to start them, at the
Thursday farmers’ market)
……Suchada Promchiri of Osogood Foods on College near Ossington, for making colourful cookies-on-sticks for the kids to nibble at "Puppets on Ice"
……Judy Simutis, for bringing over Valentine treats for the snack bar in February (in the past, Judy has also made dog pizza for the park dogs in the bake oven)
…..Anne Ruetz and John Dent, for organizing a "love the park" better-late-than-never Valentine Friday Night Supper on February 25, a wonderfully peaceful, friendly dinner that also gave our park’s Hungarian staff intern Gabriella Mihalik a chance to shine as a cook (and she’ll do more)
…….Janet Nicol and Peter Wall, for ordering up some firewood for the park from the Happy Farme. Now the rink house wood stove can keep a fire in for the extended-rink season in March
…...Alan Carlisle for persuading Downtown Lumber to give him skids, and then hauling them up to the park to keep us in bake-oven wood for the whole winter (so we could bake park bread)
……Connie Chisholm, carpenter, who’s fixing the park’s rocking bench that Leemala Ragubance and Shanti Nahata gave the rink house, so that two can rock together in front of the wood stove
……Alvaro Venturelli of Plan B Organics, who donated leftover produce at the end of the farmers’ market almost every week, for the rink suppers
……Ben Sosnicki, who donated whole boxes of organic onions to the snack bar to go along with Jessie Sosnicki’s delicious perogies
……the city rink staff, supervisors Brian Green and Scott Atwood and their never-say-die crews, for giving rink lovers the best outdoor artificial ice rink maintenance of any winter in living memory (no exaggeration!); and the Parks and Recreation city rink manager, James Dann, Director Don Boyle and Acting General Manager Brenda Librecz, who supported the improvement in rink service — and to the mechanics who kept even the tired old zambonis running: James Lamb and his colleague CK . A triumph after years of struggle. All these people should get an Oscar.
A SNEAK PREVIEW OF SPRING/SUMMER PARK EVENTS
So far this is what’s happening for sure when the park turns green again. Late May (or early July): Megan O’Shea’s and Lisa Puijuan’s "Dancing in the park" — involves a week of quilting, dancing, storytelling; June 4: "A little folk festival" — a main stage and an acoustic stage near the oven as well — it’s a folk festival pulling together those of Laura Repo’s friends who have bands and little children; June 18: "Day of Delight," Clay and Paper’s annual ode to the return of summer; June 21-26: the second year of the "Cooking Fire Theatre Festival" (of outdoor theatre); third week of July: Corpus Dance Company Dusk Dances, in the; just after that, on one Friday night before Simcoe Day, a visit from Fort York staff cook Bridget Wranich, and some 1812 soldiers in uniform, to help our park cooks prepare a "campaign supper" with the old military cookware and a soldiers’ menu; then in August — Clay and Paper’s annual giant puppet performances. Whew!
CITY SECRETS: CHAPTER
TWO
Our park’s little research group (CELOS — stands for Centre for Local Research into Public Space) got excited by Mayor Miller’s inaugural promise, a year and a half ago, to open the doors at City Hall. We wanted to know how public space can work better and be better supported, how mistakes can be recognized and fixed. But so far our inquiries have been difficult. We’ve had to use the freedom of information laws to find out the most basic things, and even those laws don’t always work well. We’ve had to appeal to the province for help when the City’s Corporate Access and Privacy office simply couldn’t get any information from City departments, despite legal requirements. Provincial appeals cost $25 each. Before Christmas, our humorous "buy a city secret" campaign yielded enough sponsors to pay for five appeals. Some of these appeals are still in mediation (a huge amount of government staff time is used to get governments to release information), but some are beginning to bring results.
Our main questions had to do with two concerns: 1. how did it happen that so many city playgrounds were destroyed or dumbed down in the great post-amalgamation CSA inquisition? And 2. why is there so little money available for improving city parks? (Example: our park’s rutted thoroughfare was first recommended for paving in 1923, and it’s still not on the list for fixing.)
Freedom of information answers about playgrounds. Example: >From 1999 on, City Council allocated a special fund of $5.9 million to get park playgrounds to meet CSA standards. $1.04 million was spent on replacement structures in 49 playgrounds (almost 70 % went to two companies). The remaining $4.86 million is said by the City to have been spent on CSA-linked repairs and alterations. However, Parks and Recreation are unable to provide an accounting for how and where that money was spent. To do the paperwork, they say, supervisors would need to hunt through the files for 320 hours, at a cost of $9,600 in staff time (which our research group would have to pay). Even just to find out what was spent at two sample park playgrounds (Huron Park and Dufferin Grove Park) the City would charge us $3,360. (Really.)
This fee is now being appealed. So also is the Corporate Finance Claims Department’s refusal to answer how many playground-related injury claims the city has had since amalgamation (between 1989 and 1997, there appears to have been one playground claim only, for $23,570 — not a very high danger indicator, to prompt the destruction of so many City playgrounds). Also in appeal: the same Division’s refusal to give insurance premiums (to answer the question: did premiums maybe get so high that the City was forced to remove all the fun parts of playgrounds?).
Freedom of information answers about money to improve parks. Example: whenever a new housing development goes up in a neighborhood, the developer is charged a percentage of the building costs to pay for a "park levy." The idea is that new people who move in will use the nearby parks more, and so the developer should contribute to improving the parks or buying new parkland.
The money thus obtained is divided in half — one half for buying new parkland, one half for improving existing parks — and then in half again — one quarter used for local park improvement and one to throw into the pot for improving the bigger city-wide destination parks.
Since 1999, over $25.8 million has been levied to improve local parks. In our immediate neighborhood, the development that went up on College Street (when the Lithuanian Church was torn down) paid out $60,582 in park levies. That new housing is one block from Dufferin Grove Park. As far as we can discover, the amount that went into improving our park from this levy (or any other part of the fund) since amalgamation was $0. It could be that the money is being very well spent to improve other nearby parks. But there’s the problem — there seems to be no comprehensive list of the improvement projects. Another example: when CELOS tried to find out how much money Parks and Recreation spends on which consultants, and for what projects, we were told that no tally exists there either. We think that there ought to be some way to figure out what gets done, by whom and at what price. So these freedom of information refusals are being appealed.
MEDIA WATCH
February was the month when the park made all the papers. Peter Kuitenbrouwer wrote a piece about shinny hockey in the National Post. It didn’t mention our rink by name but this is where he often plays, and he described it lovingly. Then there were the trio of human rights articles — first by a journalism intern named Jenny Juen in NOW Magazine, then by a freelance writer named Julie Traves in the Globe (who quoted our human rights complainant as comparing herself to Rosa Parks), then a long piece by veteran columnist Rosie DiManno in the Toronto Star, who wrote that our troublesome breastfeeding issue was an instance of "the granola left eating itself." In between, the Star also did a big shinny hockey piece by Dave Bidini marking Dufferin Rink as a "hockeytopia." And finally the Toronto Sun ran an impressively detailed sports section article by Mark Keast on the different cultures which have adopted hockey. That piece included a photo of one of our favorite rink rats, Johnny Leung, posed in front of our NHLPA yellow-skates shelf. When the reporter asked Johnny his age, he said 13, which is what was printed on the photo’s caption. But he’s really only 11. Newspapers often get things wrong.
BREASTFEEDING AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS LAWS: NEWS FROM OUR LEGAL COMMITTEE
On January 7, Jutta Mason made a comment to a breastfeeding woman at the rink house which led that person to make a now-well-known human rights complaint to the City. Jutta protested that it was the degree of undress she had spoken about, not the human right to breastfeed at the rink house (or anywhere else). Parks and Recreation Director Don Boyle wrote to us that any degree of undress while breastfeeding in the rink house is protected by law: "A woman has the right to be topless in public. We must recognize / respect these rights and move forward." City Councillor Adam Giambrone arranged for a formal apology from the City.
So a few of the park friends struck a legal committee to study the Ontario Human Rights Code and the related Canadian legal cases. It was pretty evident that the "right to be topless" was not the issue at our rink. The Gwen Jacob case in 1996 had decided that anywhere a man could be shirtless, so could a woman. Neither of them would be subject to arrest for indecent exposure. But that doesn’t abolish dress codes inside buildings — they just have to be equally applied. "No shirt, no shoes, no service" is not an illegal rule — if it covers both genders.
Since our park’s rink is an unusual rink house/ community room combination, we don’t let men go around shirtless any more than women. If shinny hockey players (male or female) want to change their clothes during public skating times, we ask them to move to the chairs in the sink area of the washrooms.
But the human right to breastfeed comes under a different law — the right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sex or family status. Neither a mother nor a baby can be discriminated against on the grounds of the baby’s need to drink its mother’s milk. Excellent! One of the many beauties of breastfeeding is that as long as the baby is with the mother, she can put the baby to the breast as soon as hunger strikes, and everyone is content. So wherever babies can be present (not usually in a concert hall or sitting in the middle of a road, but almost anywhere else), no one can tell the mother to stop feeding her baby.
Beyond that, the only direct reference in existing cases is a Manitoba Human Rights Tribunal decision from December 2000, in which the basic right of the mother to nourish her baby was annexed to a concern about "the duty to accommodate reasonableness and something of a give-and-take on the part of all those who are affected by a given situation."
Dufferin Rink clubhouse
So here’s our legal study-group’s idea. Let’s try some good sense. Our park is already "breastfeeding central," and that’s intentional. At the same time, we could take up the Manitoba human rights adjudicator’s invitation to ‘reasonableness.’ Reasonably, a mother doesn’t need to take off her shirt to breastfeed her baby even if the city policy says she can. Nor does she need to stand up in the middle of our crowded rink house and lift up her whole shirt before getting started. In the very rare case that a breastfeeding mother’s personal style demands those things, someone can invite her to go and sit on the wicker chair in the sink area of the washroom. If she refuses, that may be her right. Others sitting nearby can tell her — gently, politely, earnestly — how they feel about her display, if they wish. Or they can pull the curtain that we use for privacy when a hockey permit group needs to change. There’s no law against speaking with good will and there’s no law against pulling a curtain.
It’s very important to remember that the Ontario Human Rights Code — as it suggests in its preamble — is intended to unite communities, not divide them. That means, among other things, that we’re allowed to talk, write, argue, disagree, agree, about the everyday details of human rights. Freedom of speech is a basic human right in Canada. In the presence of good will, it can work wonders. And open-hearted discussion works better than the threat of taking each other to court for what we say — any day.
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