Last fall, Leslie Toy, a park friend who works for the Toronto Food Policy Council, told us about a city of Toronto one-time grant program called the "Food and Hunger Action Project." There were grants available for community kitchens because the provincial government had given the city a kind of "rebate" of about $10 million for exceeding its workfare targets. It was too complicated to just give that money to the families who had been cut back in their social support money, so the city decided to put the money toward food instead. That seemed like a sign to us. We had been wanting to put a slightly bigger kitchen into the zamboni garage alcove for several years, since the converted slop-closet that we currently use in the rink house is very small. We had already got an estimate with drawings from Nigel Dean (the neighbourhood contractor and friend of the park who helped build the bake-ovens). Also the G.H.Wood Foundation had paid for Richard Boehnke, a public health consultant, to make a report for us on our food safety arrangements. So we were ready, and this grant program seemed like a fit - until we saw the city’s application form, which was 46 pages long. Good grief! But three of the part-time park staff said they would help us work on the application, as a way to learn how funding applications are filled out. (They learned more than they ever wanted to know.) If it hadn’t been for the bravery of Anna Bekerman, Jenny Cook, and Caitlin Shea in the face of paperwork, the grant would have never been submitted.

Park manager James Dann wrote us a letter of support, and on December 17, with 10 minutes to go before the deadline, Anna Bekerman sprinted across Nathan Philips Square into city hall, went up the elevator, hurried along a hallway, and laid our great big fat application package down on the table in the designated room. 46 pages to say: "Please give us $20,000 to build a better park kitchen."

And then in the middle of March we found out we were approved for the grant. One reason we got it, perhaps, was that the G.H.Wood Foundation wrote us a letter saying that they would give us a conditional grant of $8000 in addition, if we were approved for the city grant. Another example of their steadfastness.

City council still has to approve the grants in general, which won’t happen until the end of April. But after that it’s ready to go.

A grant for nesting boxes and a dishwasher: Our long-time park friend Pat MacKay topped up this good fortune by giving us another $500, some of that to build some nesting boxes for birds in the native-species gardens, and the rest to go toward a dishwasher/sanitizer in the new kitchen. There are still some expenses not covered, but the community pizza-day income should take care of that.

If you want more detailed information about the Friends of Dufferin Grove Park expenses and income, you can open a PDF of our 2002 Expenses and Income Report.