In this issue:
- First weekend of rink opening
- Playground equipment
- Food in the winter park
- Citizens' Hall Meeting: Budget mystery
- Ice rink schedule
- Loblaws comes to the Park
- Grazing on the Commons Conference
- Mimo’s good luck
- Dangerous drivers
- Dufferin Race Track
First weekend of rink opening:
Saturday: that day started off at seven a.m. with Andrew MacDonald baking bread for his late-December wedding (he freezes it) and being interviewed about it for a province-wide morning radio show, in a live item broadcast from the park. The interviewer was funny. He said he was skating and kneading bread, but he wasn’t – he was just holding the cell phone and pretending to do those things! The rink opened on time at 9 a.m. The ice was amazingly good despite the warm weather (11 celsius). In the afternoon the park had basketball, hockey, frisbee, soccer, and baseball, all going on at the same time. The scene looked as though Dufferin Grove Park had moved to Florida – green grass, flowers still in the gardens, and warm sunshine, all in December.
In the evening when the ice lost its thin covering of water, the rink was full of teenage shinny hockey players. Then later, after the building was locked for the night, there was a robbery. Someone either hid inside the building just before the staff left or got in through a sliding window, and then perhaps they let their friends in and they were able to force up the metal hatch to the office, breaking the metal around the lock. When staff came back, the fridge was open, the butter dish smashed on the floor, all the juices were gone, and the money pouch (with all the change and snack bar money) was also gone from its drawer. That was a low trick.
[Note: In the week that followed, over half the food money was replaced through donations. The women’s shinny permit alone collected $40 in a few minutes, when they heard about the robbery. The rest of the money was replaced by charging a toonie to youth who wanted to play for an extra two hours after rink closing-time – a popular arrangement now that the rink is not staffed after 9 most nights.]
Sunday: A sunny day but not as warm (9 celcius). The new skating teachers played games with kids in the skating practice time in the morning; in the middle of the afternoon staff began to prepare for the rink opening/ Christmas tree lighting celebration; more and more people came; at 4 p.m. the Nyamamusango marimba band set up beside the campfire at the big oven, and soon a big, appreciative audience collected there; at 5 p.m. 40 loaves of hot bread (rosemary and 6-grain) were taken out of oven and sold there within 10 minutes; at 5.15 Councillor Mario Silva came to the big evergreen near the wildflower sign, along with a carol choir; at 5.30 the Christmas tree was lit (Santa was there, with a giant sack of chocolate bars from the Cadbury Chocolate Factory on Gladstone Avenue); at 5.45 some people came back up the hill to drink free hot chocolate and listen to the Darbazi Choir inside the rink house. Then for another hour after dark there were people all over - around two campfires, in the rink house, and out on the rink: a lively park.
The playground slide was removed on November 28, after yet another child fell off the unsafe top platform and had to spend an evening at Sick Kids Hospital. The mother of this child said she was afraid to call the city and complain in case they would just remove the slide and leave the playground with no slide at all. And that’s exactly what happened. However, Councillor Silva’s assistant Ana Bailao called the parks department and was told by the director, Don Boyle, that the playground will get a new slide in the spring.
Although other parents had complained about the slide in the past, the city inspector always said the slide was not a hazard, judged by the new "CSA" rules. So because our slide didn’t offend the CSA rules, even if many children fell off it, city staff felt that the city would not have a problem with liability. (Hard to believe, isn’t it?) On the other hand, if playground equipment does not meet the "CSA standards," even if there has not been any problem with it, it may be removed. (The CSA is an association of the same manufacturers who are ready to sell us all the replacement equipment.)
That’s why, on the same day as our slide was removed, the big trucks went over to Trinity-Bellwoods park and removed their wooden play structure (it was much like ours, which is still in place). According to the playground users there, no one was warned about this beforehand, nor was their citizens’ Park Committee told. (Beyond that, the new CSA standards do not apply to any structures built before 1998, but this guideline was not being followed here.) A new plastic-coated metal structure has been installed, again apparently without getting community advice in making a selection from the manufacturer’s catalogue.
To make sure that no such unexpected event occurs here at Dufferin Grove Park, playground users and their parents will have several morning meetings at the rink house in early February (with juice, tea, and cookies) to discuss playground issues. Meantime we’ve asked the city staff to post all playground-related bulletins and plans on the rink house bulletin board WELL IN ADVANCE of any action to clear out the playgrounds. The new parks manager of our area, James Dann, has agreed to this.
One example of problems with "CSA" standards: the rules say that the ground under any equipment should be soft enough so a fall doesn’t hurt too much, break bones etc. If a park can’t afford the new synthetic rubber playground floorings (very expensive, very hard to maintain, and maybe flammable), the park can use wood mulch. Easy, right? Wrong. Besides putting splinters in little ankles, knees, hands, and all the other exposed skin of active kids, the mulch offers good cover for broken glass, needles, sharp metal, and other trash. Spilled juice and food, concealed in the wood chips, can set up little microcultures of multiplying germs, and the Toronto rats – big and getting bigger – can set up their tunnels under the wood chips, to get to bits of decomposing food.
All this in the name of additional safety. Back to the drawing board?
Every Sunday will be baking day at the bread ovens, with fresh bread and cinnamon buns for sale straight from the big community oven, still hot. The smaller oven will also be hot, for those people who would like to combine their skate with cooking their dinner. Bring your chicken or you root vegetables or your pie or your sausages, or anything else. They’ll cook into a delicious meal while you’re enjoying the ice, and then you can either picnic at the rink house (or by the campfire beside the oven) or carry your supper home with you, all cooked. For those who don’t feel like cooking but still get hungry from all that fresh air and exercise, there will be good winter soup and ploughman’s platters (crusty oven bread, cheddar, and pickle - traditionally served with beer, but) available, as well as the usual mini-pizzas and the park chocolate chip cookies. This year more food will have organic ingredients. That includes the coffee: fair trade organic coffee, available all day long. (The vending machines will still offer hot chocolate, ordinary coffee, and pop.)
Nov.21 Citizens’ Hall meeting postponed to January
Our community meeting about the park had to be postponed after park staff were the city unable to discover what the park budget is, in time for the meeting (budget information requested on Oct.10; four repeat requests). Since the citizens’ hall meeting was meant to deal with realities (e.g. if the rink loses a third of its season, how much money is being saved? Where does it go instead? How much does it cost to have trash picked up? Etc., etc.) there was no point having the meeting and wasting people’s time.
As of Dec.1, we still have no more budget information. In other words, what the newspapers reported about the city government as a whole ("City staff members said that they do not know how much they spent on consultants, leased equipment.." John Barber, The Globe and Mail) is also true in our park. It’s not that park staff are keeping information hidden. It’s worse: they actually don’t know the cost of running our park.
We will encourage park staff to keep on trying. We have given them some very specific questions that will hopefully make it possible to piece together how much our park costs (and what money is available to run any park of similar size in Toronto). Hopefully this information will be available in January so our community meeting can be rescheduled. For more information, consult the park web site at http://dufferinpark.ca.
DECEMBER 1-MARCH 3
Monday shinny
9:00am - 3:30pm all ages
3:30pm - 5:30pm 14 to 17
5:30pm - 6:30pm 13 and under (and parent)
6:30pm - 7:45pm all ages
7:45pm - 8:55pm 18 and over
Tuesday shinny
9:00am - 3:30pm all ages
3:30pm - 5:30pm 14 to 17
5:30pm - 6:30pm 13 and under (and parent)
6:30pm - 7:45pm all ages
7:45pm - 8:55pm 18 and over
Wednesday shinny
9:00am - 3:30pm all ages
3:30pm - 5:30pm 14 to 17
5:30pm - 6:45pm 13 and under (and parent)
6:45pm - 8:15pm week-by-week shinny permit (ask rink staff)
8:15pm - 9:30pm 18 and over
Thursday shinny
9:00am - 3:30pm all ages
3:30pm - 5:30pm 14 to 17
5:30pm - 6:30pm 13 and under (and parent)
6:30pm - 7:45pm all ages
7:45pm - 8:55pm 18 and over
Friday shinny
9:00am - 3:30pm all ages
3:30pm - 5:30pm 14 to 17
5:30pm - 6:30pm 13 and under (and parent)
6:30pm - 7:45pm all ages
7:45pm - 8:55pm 18 and over
Saturday shinny
9:00am - 12:00pm Learn to skate
12:00pm - 1:30pm 13 and under (and parent)
1:30pm - 3:45pm all ages
3:45pm - 5:15pm 14 to 17
5:15pm - 7:00pm all ages
7:00pm - 8:45pm 18 and over
Sunday(No shinny, pleasure skating only)
10:00am - 6:00pm Pleasure skating
*First note: pleasure skating rink is ALWAYS OPEN except during bad weather. Skate by moonlight or at sunrise if you like.
**Second note: after hours shinny (until 11 p.m.) can be arranged on Sundays after 8, Fridays and Saturdays after 9. Contact Jutta at 416/392-0913.
***Third note: WE’RE TRYING TO KEEP THE RINK PHONE MESSAGE ALWAYS UPDATED ON ICE CONDITONS. CALL 416/392-0913.
Hockey tournament
This year it’s in February. Last year Dufferin Rink was disgraced because of lack of practice, and that lack was partly because of lack of hockey equipment. This year Jaqueline Peeters, mother of three excellent young hockey players, made us aware of some give-away equipment available for kids who can’t buy their own. (Don Cherry promoted this collection through the beer stores). We’ve arranged to try and get some, so more kids can play. If you want to find out more, or sign up, call the rink at 416/392-0913 and leave a message for SAM PIGGOTT.
Loblaws comes to Dufferin Grove Park
Last month, 13 employees of Loblaws’ President’s Choice Division came to have a baking day at the park. Some of them work for Loblaws’ organic foods section, and they were interested in seeing how our ovens worked for bread-baking, as a fun field trip for their staff. (Arie Kamp, the park seed man and gardener, thought that we might get a contract with Loblaws to bake bread for them. They told Arie that a huge food corporation like Loblaws buys its inventory not by the pound or the ton but by the field, or by whole farms. Baking bread for Loblaws in a wood-fired bread oven would be like trying to supply retail clothing to Wal-mart with a spinning wheel.)
The visitors worked with great cheerfulness and baked 40 loaves of very good bread. Elizabeth Harris, the oven-builder at Riverdale Farm who started their succesful organic farmers’ market this past summer, had prepared a tasty soup, and the visit ended with a big lunch of soup and bread for all the bakers. They made a donation to both our park and Riverdale. Afterwards, one of the Loblaws staff, Leslie Landry, came by with a big box full of parchment paper (used for baking) as another gift.
The fact is, we use Loblaws Organic All-Purpose Flour as one ingredient in our park bread dough. It seems to work out better than any other organic flour we’ve tried so far. We would welcome alternative leads to good flour.
Grazing on the Commons Conference
On Nov.15, a park truck picked up our pile of bricks, our food carts, our pizza dough, and our new display about the park, and took all these things to the St. Lawrence Market building. There we set up our temporary oven, right beside the north market building. This was fun, and all sorts of people came by and talked to us as we were making pizza. (And some of them made pizza.)
When we first arrived, there were two wooden park platforms blocking the area where we wanted to set up. Since there were three park staff picking up litter, we asked if they could give us a hand to move the platforms out of the way. One of them said no, he doesn’t have to do such things. He is a litter-picker, not a platform-mover. Then he sat in his truck for an hour and a half, first having lunch and then perhaps just waiting for more litter. The second worker sat with him. The third, a man from El Salvador, was interested in our oven. He told us that he had built a similar-size oven for his mother back home. He went and got another parks worker from an adjoining park. They moved the platforms for us, and we made them some pizza.
It looks as though Mimo (the homeless man who spends time in the park) might be a lucky person in some ways, despite his troubles. When he decided to sleep in the back yard of City Councillor Silva’s neighbour, Councillor Silva took some action. He called a city homeless counselling service, and a counsellor named Walter Brierley began to look for Mimo. Around the same time, Jaime Batista, the owner of the Kubata café on College near Rusholme, read what was written about Mimo in this newsletter, and he called the park. He knew a lot more about Mimo than we did, and the pieces began to fall into place. Again about the same time, Arie Kamp decided to cook soup for homeless people, only he doesn’t usually cook. So he asked Judy Simutis to teach him, and Judy’s mother also helped. Judy went looking for other people who knew Mimo, and found Cledys Dos Reis, owner of Sousa’s Bakery at College and Dufferin. Cledys also knew much more than we knew.
Now Walter Brierley and Cledys Dos Reis and Jaime Batista have all connected. Walter says he is astonished at the support this community has given Mimo. (Translate: community = a handful of very generous people!) Things are looking up and it looks as though Mimo may have a roof over his head this winter. Lately he’s even been looking clean and handsome sometimes.
The fact is, Mimo may talk to unseen people and walk around in a daze some of the time, but in other ways his ability to interest good people in helping him shows sheer genius.
Last month we reported on the efforts of Donna and Frank Bertucci to get some action on the problem of speeding cars near St. Mary’s High School. Since that time the problem has improved, but not enough. One of the speeding cars is driven by Paul, a frequent user of the skating rink (no longer a St.Mary’s student). If anyone would like to meet with Paul and talk to him in person about how his driving affects the neighbourhood, we would be happy to help set up such a meeting. (Call the rink at 416/392-0913 and leave a message.) If the problem persists, next month we will publish Paul’s full name and his parents’ phone number. Paul is not the only reckless driver. We’ll post car license plates and names as we can get them, and follow up.
At the traffic meeting in October, School Watch Officer Rondi Craig of the Toronto Police Service made a good suggestions: that he would make a small poster outlining the various civil remedies of unsafe driving (including the police’s power to contact the driver’s insurance company and make them aware of problems). P.C.Craig has twice promised that the poster is ready, but it has not materialized. Hopefully by the time the January newsletter comes out, we will have the poster in hand and can print it in the newsletter.
We have also posted the Toronto Sun front page of November 29 at the rink, showing the car that killed 18-year-old Steven Francisco in a youthful joy ride similar to what has sometimes been observed near the school.
Before 1955, the Dufferin Mall was a popular horse racing track, called "Dufferin Park." Rube Marcus, the owner of the famous rice-and-bean stand at St. Lawrence Market (downstairs in the south market building) told us that he used to go there a lot as a boy (he’s over 80 now). He said that when he was 12, he figured out a great way to earn some money: he would buy a pound of peanuts for 10 cents and divide it up into 7 bags, which he sold at the racetrack for 5 cents each, on Saturdays in the winter. He said the bleachers weren’t heated, and he used to stand over by the bookmaker’s fire. The bookmaker always had a big campfire near the bleachers, and people would come over there to place bets and get warm. Rube said he sometimes made $2 or $3 a day.
The racetrack is gone but the campfire refuses to leave. It just migrated across the street to our park - every Sunday beside the bake oven. Bags of "Rube’s peanuts" will be for sale there, in honour of a 12-year-old racetrack entrepreneur in the 1930’s.
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
Web site: Joe Adelaars, Henrik Bechmann, Caitlin Shea
Park phone: 416 392-0913; street address: 875 Dufferin Street
E-mail: dufferinpark@dufferinpark.ca
List Serve: Emily Visser, Bernard King