Comments?
For the basics, see
- Website & Privacy Policies
- How To Get Involved
- The Role of the Park
Search options:
Department Site Map
Custodians:
Printer friendly version
posted May 9, 2005
Funding and Materials
The Cob Courtyard: Project Receives Funding
Needs Materials and Tools (and people)
Georgie Donais applied to the Parks and Trees Foundation for $2500 to help build the cob courtyard wall, and the foundation has approved her grant. Wonderful. An earthen-walled courtyard will enclose the space to the northwest of the pool, creating an outdoor gathering place. It will be built with a sand-clay-straw mix known as "cob" or "monolithic adobe", which is mixed by foot and applied by hand.
The first stage, beginning June 11, is digging a foundation trench and filling it with gravel and then "urbanite" (chunks of cut up sidewalk rubble). Georgie writes: "Check out the Cob in the Park display if you are at the Thursday market, and add your name to the list if you would like to be involved. Upcoming activities include digging the foundation trench, and cutting, moving and mortaring the foundation urbanite. Sounds like fun? I thought so! "
MATERIALS LIST: Georgie's also sent a list of materials needed (besides straw, clay, sand, gravel and used concrete): If you have any of these adding clutter to your garage or basement, unused, here is your chance to get rid of them, and contribute to the project at the same time. Or, if you dare, you could mark them clearly with your name and just lend them to the park for this project.
TOOLS: shovels, mattocks and pulaskis and grubhoes; hand tampers; wheel barrows; blue tarps; 5 gallon pails; carpenter's levels; garden forks; hoes; old, course-tooth handsaws, and machetes; rope; measuring tapes; plaster's trowels and tools; axes and hatchets; hammers, squares, saws, chisels, drills, chalk lines, block planes, files; crowbars, masonry trowels, cold chisels, 2-3 pound hammers, sledge hammers; paintbrushes
HARDWARE & GLASS: used kitchen sinks (one double sink, and two single sinks, a bathroom sink or two); associated faucets; coloured bottles, bottles with unusual shapes, clear jars and wine bottles
WOOD: plywood (large and small pieces); dimensional lumber (2x4s, 2x6s, etc.); cordwood, seasoned; uncut logs.
For more information on this project, you can contact Georgie at cob@dufferinpark.ca or leave her a message at the rink house 416 392-0913. How many people these days get to build any kind of shelter? This wall curves into an alcove with an overhang, contains niches and windows, wraps around our public health washing station for the food cart. It needs people to squash clay with their feet so it can be mixed with straw and shaped by hand - exactly the same way people built shelter in Africa, in medieval England, in the early prairie settlements in the west. Park staff Bianca Morgan, just back from Kenya, will be the backup for Georgie, the food cart will be on the site, there will be help with child care - this may be the most memorable park summer yet.