friends of dufferin grove park
July 2001 Newsletter

In this issue:

Garden News:
Annick Mitchell planted one of the parks triangle vegetable gardens. She says: " In early May I planted a whole lot of stuff...peas, herbs, lettuce, Swiss chard, and of course POTATOES. A week later I added peppers and tomatoes. I had to replant three of the tomato plants because somebody stole them. I decided to try irrigation trenches the way they do in Spain, where my sister lives, for the peppers and the onions. My son Ben likes this garden because it's all in neat rows. He and his brother Jake and Kate(his girlfriend) helped me dig and plant the garden as their mother's day present...sweat presents."

Jutta Mason planted the other triangular vegetable bed. Everything is doing well, including the plentiful coriander that replanted itself from last year. The bed includes both domestic and wild vegetables (lambs quarters, amaranth see recipe section), and it will have succession plantings this year, to keep the pizza days and the special events days well supplied.

Arie Kemp planted out most of the bedding plants (the rink garage was full of flats) from High Park greenhouse. He hardly had to water them, theres been so much rain. Arie is unhappy about people walking or riding their bikes through his garden beds, crushing the flowers. He has added some barriers, although he thought better of putting boards with nails (pointing up) in amongst the flowers. There are some liability issues to such an approach.

Destruction of plants is happily rare at our park, but it still hurts when you see the evidence.

Native-species gardens: One of the flowering plums planted this spring by Gene Threndyle didnt survive the transplanting, or so it appears. The others seem to be catching on. Gene says, wait and see if the bare bush might sprout from the root: "remember, a gardener must be patient." There is going to be a bumper crop of wild strawberries in the beds near the wildflower signs, and for the first time there are raspberry blossoms too. The marsh fountain weathered the heavy rains well (last year the pump had trouble, and Gene had to reposition the waterspout frequently).

The test meadow: just west of the large bake oven there is a small patch of high grass with shasta daisies, calendula, brown-eyed Susans, coneflowers, blue flax, blanket flower, and some coreopsis. This is an attempt to make an old-fashioned (but not native-species) flower meadow that will stabilize and re-seed itself (in the case of self-seeding flowers). Arie Camp seeded the area and Jutta Mason has been trying to reduce dandelion, shepherds purse, and plantain to prevent these plants from choking the flowers.

Parkdale and Toronto Horticultural Society Garden Tour, June 3. This yearly west-end garden tour will visit the park for the first time ever this year, with a stop at the pizza oven for some lunch.

Grass-cutting troubles: For those park users who have commented on the high grass in different parts of the park, we asked Mike Hindle, the park grounds supervisor, to explain. He said that he has once again been assigned a smaller crew than last year; that they have had troubles with machinery break-down; that at this time of year they have to give priority to sports fields; and that because of the rain the grass is growing very fast now. He says the next major mowing may not be until mid-to-late June.

Mushrooms in the park: After it started to get rainy in May, Shirley (who walks the dog Sally) found a large number of mushrooms growing near the wildflower sign, under the big maples. When we consulted Jimmy Longo of Longos Groceries, he said they might be the same kind as you buy in the store. We need a park mushroom expert. If you know how to distinguish mushrooms and are willing to tell us at the park, please call Johanne at the rink house: 392-0913.

Campfires:

In May there were 6 campfire permits at the campfire circle. Even on the rainy Victoria Day Monday a hardy group of parents and children had their campfire in the light rain and then set off firecrackers. On May 26, former park staff Jacqueline Peeters celebrated at the park for two reasons: she turned 40 and she finished law school. She was joined at the pizza oven and later at the campfire by almost 100 well-wishers, including former park artist Elyse Pomeranz, now a Waldorf teacher, and her husband Amnon Buchbinder, who made our ten-minute "Big Back Yard Everyone Welcome" video, in 1994, and who is now a film professor at York University. On May 30, the girl guides were back with their guide leader Barb Lyons.

How to get a campfire in the park: if you wish to have a campfire, call Johanne at the rink house: 392-0913. If no one else has booked the fire circle for that night, Johanne will arrange a meeting, so you and she can go over the basic safety rules (a bucket of sand, a bucket of water, a shovel, and continuous adult supervision). Then Johanne will lend you a key to the firewood shed (just outside the rink house garage) and give you a copy of the Friends of Dufferin Grove Fire Permit. You pay $10 for use of the circle (this goes to the parks department to cover the cost of wood transport, and other expenses).

On the day of the permit, Johanne will put a bucket of water and the other supplies into the shed, plus firewood and the wheelbarrow. Shell call the fire department to let them know the exact times of the campfire, so theyll be informed about the reason for smoke in a park, if someone makes a call. The fire department is very accustomed to getting those calls from us now.

The New York group Project for Public Spaces has posted material about our park and our cooking fires on their web site, from May 21 to June 7. It includes some stories about our campfires, and various adventures that have taken place around them. If you want to look this up, the web address is www.urbanparks.pps.org , then look for the "ask the expert" page.

Firewood: Our park and now Christie Pits park continue to benefit from the generosity of Hussain Ali, who brings us free skid wood remainders from his skid factory. If you want to find out why Mr.Ali called us up with his offer of free wood, you can read about it on the urban parks web site (web address above). The wood supply Mr.Ali delivers to us from North York on his own time has made so much fun for so many school classes, ESL programs, neighbourhood events, and summer camps over the past six years. To inaugurate the new Christie Pits oven, Lily Weston, now an education assistant at St.Raymonds School, brought down three school classes on May 24, including a behaviour class and a deaf class. All three classes made pizza and had a really good time. Without Mr.Alis continuous gift of firewood all this would be so much more difficult. A big thank you to Hussain Ali.

Dog troubles:

In the spring when the weather gets nicer it often seems that the number of dogs in the park rises. Sometimes trouble starts. These are the current troublesome dog issues:

1. Pit bulls: Many people with and without dogs are unhappy about the presence of pit bulls in the park, especially if they are off leash.

2. Dogs off leash: In the middle of May the park staff called the Animal Control Department to report a pit bull without an owner. The dog had stolen pizza from a child at the pizza oven and had barked at people, frightening them. Some parents left the park immediately with their children. The Animal Control officer, when he arrived after an hour, was unhappy to learn that many people walk their dogs off leash in this park, and said that if people are so stupid as to do that and break the by-law, he would either order an enforcement blitz (ticket: $260) on this park or refuse to respond to calls in the future. He seemed undecided which course of action to take.

Park staff asked Councillor Mario Silva's office to check these statements with the Head of Animal Control, Kim Smithers. She said the officer did not express department policy in his suggestion that their office might not respond to dog-related calls for assistance in the future. Ms. Smithers said she would be interested in finding out more details about dog issues here. Her phone number is 416/338-6677. So far it has not been possible to reach her by phone, since she is very busy.

3. Dogs in the childrens play areas: When park supervisor Tino DeCastro learned that some dog walkers are taking their dogs to the children's sandpit late at night and allowing them to play in the sand, he had signs posted asking dog owners not to allow their dogs in these areas, for reasons of hygiene. (Small children play a great deal in these areas and they sometimes get the sand in their mouths.) The owner of a pit bull named Boomer has three times refused to abide by these signs. He says he believes its his right to take his dog anywhere in the park that he chooses. The third time he told the person asking him to remove his dog from the sand play area, that she should "grow up."

Tino DeCastro says he is prepared to issue a trespass letter to anyone who continues to exercise their dogs in the areas set aside for children. Neighbourhood veterinarian Jack Gewarter was consulted about the hygiene issue. He told us that unless a child directly eats dog or cat feces, the transmission of parasites (just from dog fur if the dog rolls in the sand, for instance) is extremely unlikely. However, he felt a responsible dog owner would not take his dog into childrens' play areas at any time (and most of our park dog walkers don't).

4. Dog fights: There were two instances in May when a pit bull attacked another dog in the park. In the second case the dog being attacked was also a pit bull.

Discussion: The questions raised by these attacks and by other dog issues have prompted various suggestions (many, but not all, submitted by dog walkers themselves). These are all the suggestions given so far, in no order:
a)
muzzle all pit bulls;
b) park staff should have a wild-life net in the park in case a dog needs to be caught but is violent; c) permit dogs to be off leash only before 9a.m. and after 9p.m., as they do in Prospect Park in New York, and some other urban parks;
d) have a separate dog area;
e) have a meeting between Animal Control and dog owners, or just between dog owners, to work out ground rules of acceptable behaviour, (not the standard, and unenforceable, "all dogs must be on a leash") and then single out dog owners who are breaking the rules and ask Animal Control to ticket them;
f) post signs about dog rules;
g) issue letters of trespass to dog owners who break the rules, disallowing them entry to the park until they change;
h) encourage dog walkers not to congregate in large groups where the dogs are so numerous they scare other park users.

Recommendation: since dogs not only cause problems in parks but also contribute greatly to the safety of parks (because of the frequent presence of people in the park at all hours), as well as enabling their owners to have more freedom in the city (because of their sense of being protected) that dog owners schedule a meeting with Animal Control supervisor Kim Smithers to work on solutions to the problems that have come up. Also, people with suggestions (whether they own dogs or not) can email them to park supervisor Tino DeCastro at TdeCastr@city.toronto.on.ca so that he can convey them to the meeting.

Rain shelter danger averted: The seats in the rain shelter (by the playground) were made to be storage boxes, by request of the community planning meeting. Unfortunately, the tops of the boxes were built with very heavy lumber, and with slits between the boards, so the rain could get in. When the lids were opened, nothing held them and they fell back with such force on their hinges that the boxes ripped themselves apart. But the most serious problem was that if the lids had come down on anyone's hand as they tried to use the storage, their hand would have been terribly hurt. After a spring meeting with the planning department staff (who approved this design), there was no solution. But the city carpenters have come to our rescue. They have installed lighter plywood tops, held with a chain, and the storage benches are now ready to be used. One of the benches contains an electrical outlet: if your group needs to plug in a coffee maker for your picnic, or if you want to store some cooking equipment ahead of time when you plan a campfire gathering, you can borrow a key to the boxes from Johanne at 392-0913. The fee for these rain shelter amenities is $10 (but if it starts to rain you have to let other people share the shelter until the rain stops).

Jerry Shaw, teachers college community intern:

Jerry spent many evenings in May in the park. His park ads offering free tutoring didn't get any response (!), but he got to know the scene and he helped us with our communication issues. He was involved with the May newsletter, he made four beautiful additional newsletter boxes for the park, and he fixed up bulletin boards. He did many hours of research on neighbourhood-related food and gardening issues for our new "wall newspaper" bulletin board, to be posted in June. He lent a hand in sudden crises, such as the unexpected arrival of girl guides for their campfire when park staff Johanne was still on bereavement leave. It was a pleasure to know him and have his help.

Sports permits in the park:

Soccer: Dufferin Grove Park is one of the locations for the huge west-end childrens soccer league, the Toronto Eagles Soccer Club (875 children registered, 52 teams). This league will use the field Monday (8-9 year old boys), Tuesday (girls 12-14 years old), Wednesday (boys 10-11), and Friday (12-14 year old boys). Come and watch: there is some really good soccer, and you may see a future star. Weekends, the soccer area is open for community use. If you have questions, call park supervisor Tino DeCastro at 392-0041.

Baseball: Cadbury Chocolate has a baseball permit on Thursdays.

Ball hockey: Most ball hockey at the rink enclosure is just pick-up, unscheduled by the parks department. This year there has been more ball hockey than previously, so the parks staff are giving out ball hockey rink use permits if requested. These permits are still free. As of the end of May, only one permit has been granted, to a womens ball hockey group that has use of the rink every Tuesday between 7p.m. and 9p.m. If your group wants to book a regular permit, call park staff Johanne at 392-0913.

This month's recipe:

May and June are the season for young "lamb's quarters," the greenish-silvery weed that comes up everywhere and tastes similar to spinach. There was plenty to weed out in the park's native species gardens, and instead of being thrown on the compost, it ended up in Jane Price's Indian potato recipe, Aloo Gajjar.

Lamb's quarters potato curry:
2 Tablespoons ghee or butter
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 medium potatoes, in cubes the size of your thumbnail
3 cups lambs quarters, (just leaves, no stalks) coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
salt
juice of one lemon

Heat the ghee or butter (high heat) and add the cumin seed. When the seeds begin to crackle, add the potatoes and turn the heat to high medium. Fry and cook the potatoes until mostly cooked (about 6 minutes), then add the lambs quarters. Mix well and sprinkle with chili powder, coriander, salt and turmeric. Stir to coat spices evenly, cover and cook on low heat for 6-8 minutes. Add lemon juice just before serving.

Calendar of park events for June:

June 1: 9a.m. to 2.p.m., baking class from a Toronto high school, Mother Theresa Secondary School, to bake bread in the bread oven with their teacher Bonnie Weinkopf, together with Annick Mitchell, baker and vegetable gardener at our park. These students supply their high school restaurant for lunch every day: i.e. their cooking program runs a real food operation.

June 2: Midwives Collective alumni reunion mothers and babies pizza picnic 11a.m. to 4p.m.

Quita Burns of Redwing Bakery (this uses a Quebec-style clay wood-oven) near Collingwood is bringing a group of young market gardeners to our park to bake with them and explore the marketing possibilities of organic produce in Toronto. They will stay in the park clubhouse, and set up their sourdough starters on Saturday evening.

June 3: Bread baking day for Quita Burns and her group of young associates, also Annick Mitchell and Elizabeth Harris. This is a bakers reunion because all three of these bakers participated in last Mays oven-building weekend with Alan Scott.

June 7, 14, 21, and 28: Isabel Perez will be coming to the park every Thursday afternoon as the Wallace-Emerson parent-child indoor park drop-in transfers outdoors to our park, just for the month of June. A good place to eat some delicious Guatemalan food and meet other parents and children.

June 8-10: A visit from some families from Cleveland Ohio, led by Mary Jo Mazzarella and Holly Christenson. They found out about our park at a conference in Cleveland, and decided to come and see for themselves. They (15 people) will be billeted at the park clubhouse and they also have the use of Wallace-Emerson Community Centre facilities, as guests of the Parks Department. Some of them are keen cooks and they plan to use the ovens, as well as going to see the Portuguese parade at Bloor and Lansdowne and some of the other festivities at the opening of Portugal Week (June 9). Come by and see these folks at the clubhouse. They're keen to meet people who use the park.

Please note: There are no weekend birthday party bookings available for the pizza oven during July and August: no staff. Exceptions only for people who have their own keys and know how to run the oven. More information: Johanne at 416/392-0913.

Total birthday parties, campfires, pizza ovens bookings for June so far: 9

A preview of summer events:

The Dusk Dances are returning July 25-29. This summer there will be one group that includes performers in wheelchairs. if you know of any area of the park that is not wheelchair-accessible, please call Johanne at 416/392-0913 and make her aware of the problem.

David Andersons Clay and Paper Theatre will perform a workshop production of a new play by Larry Lewis called Gold, toward the middle of August. Rehearsals of that and other plays will begin outdoors in the park as soon as David finds out whether he got a youth grant from Human Resources Development Canada.

The Morris Dancers will hold their annual Ale, when lots of groups come together, eat and drink and show each other their new steps, in our park again this year. Its on the Sunday of Labour Day Weekend, Sept.2.

The Native Child and Family Services have begun working toward their fourth annual Childrens Pow Wow in our park, for September 9. This years date is chosen to correspond to international Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Awareness Day.

Update on the rink compressor operator laws: There are some hopeful signs that the city may not have to spend money on a redundant rink operator crew this coming winter. The regulations may be passed in June. To read the final letter sent by our group to the Ministry of Concumer and Business Services, scroll down.

Cook your supper at the park:

Beginning the second week of July, the bake oven will be at the right temperature to cook dinner every Tuesday and Friday from 4p.m. to 8p.m. This means that if you want to take your kids to the playground after work, you can put your dinner in the oven and then go play with your kids and relax. Come back in an hour and pick up your dinner all cooked. Wood-fired ovens make wonderful roast chicken or any other meat, and delicious roast vegetables of any kind, with the shortest preparation time. Elizabeth Harris, our baker friend from Riverdale, taught us this. On a visit to the park, she went across the street to the mall, bought two chickens, a bag of root

vegetables, some olive oil and a bottle of wine, borrowed a pan and put everything in it, and then picked a few herbs from the park herb garden. She put the wine on the chickens and the oil on the vegetables, along with the herbs and salt and pepper. An hour later she took home the most delicious-smelling dinner. She told us we should make the oven available for much more than bread and pizza, and were taking her advice.

So come and try it from July 10 on. Well have two scrap-book reference books with lots of oven recipes on hand as well, if you want to come and do some research before.

Rink Letter:

Hi friends of the rink,

Here is a copy of our final letter to the Ministry, about the rink regulations that result in so much needless cost that the rink season is to be shortened next winter.

The new regulations are due to go into law sometime in the next two weeks, we've heard. So if you agree with this letter, feel free to email Tim Sharp, senior policy advisor at the Ministry, and tell him so. His address is tim.sharp@ccr.gov.on.ca .

The Hon. Norman W. Sterling,

Minister of Consumer and Business Services,
35th Floor, 250 Yonge St.,
Toronto, M5B 2N5.

May 29, 2001.

\Dear Minister Sterling,
This is a follow-up to our previous letter to you regarding the Operating Engineers regulations as they affect neighbourhood outdoor artificial ice rinks (double pads).

Our group was included in a TSSA stakeholder consultation meeting on April 18. On the basis of what we heard there, we did some further research. We are very concerned that if your Ministry keeps the operator attendance requirements at 100 HP (instead of raising them to 200HP as was recommended), this will do nothing to further public safety, while requiring the city government to spend unnecessary money. The needless expenditure for a redundant operator would contribute directly to reduced hours of outdoor ice rink operation. Neighbourhoods like ours would be made very unhappy, understandably, to lose more weeks of rink time.

This is what we learned:
The existing regulations are 40 years old, our sophisticated rink equipment is 9 years old.
Statistics on dangerous episodes related to ice rink ammonia equipment are not available from either the provincial government or the city. That is, arguments over the regulations are not based on any recorded data of actual rink-related safety issues. There is no evidence, in other words, that there were problems which were addressed by having a fourth-class operator at double-pad rinks for eight continuous hours every day.
The stakeholders being consulted, up until we were invited, all had a direct financial stake in the regulations. This seems questionable. In particular it appears that since the Ontario Recreation Facilities Association want to go into the business of giving courses to license refrigeration compressor operators, they have a conflict of interest. Its our understanding that they have asked the Ministry to require even more of these workers, now for even single-pad ice rinks. This would make it even more expensive for the city to run its rinks.
The 100 HP regulations implicitly encourage an industry-wide return to Freon refrigeration, by making the use of ammonia refrigeration more expensive (the redundant staffing requirement). Freon is of great concern to us as citizens, because of its damaging effects on the atmosphere.
We invited the company which has charge of most outdoor ice rink compressors to give us an overview of the safety technology in place at our modern ice rink. Their staff person showed us alarms and automatic shutdown devices on every piece of equipment. Our 8-year experience with the running of our neighbourhood rink has made us very aware of the efficiency of these devices. There is no operator on duty for 2/3 of every day, but the devices, combined with a good mechanical maintenance program, have kept our rink safe and operational.
On the basis of all these factors, we would urge your Ministry to modernize the regulations by withdrawing the 8-hour operator-attendance requirements for locations under 200 HP. Your previous letter to our group, dated June 17 1996, suggests that a review of advances in equipment and monitoring technology would be reflected in the regulations. We have been patiently waiting since then, and we hope that now, when there is more need than ever to avoid wasteful expenditure in public facilities, this modernization will be put in place.

Yours sincerely,

Jane Price,
President, Friends of Dufferin Grove Park

Neighbourhood announcements:

Rob Rennick and his neighbours have been trying to get St. Marys Catholic Secondary School, across from the park, to alter their movie-set-quality intense parking lot lights, which were put in without neighbourhood consultation. These huge lights shine brightly right into the adjoining houses, all night long. The school is holding their second neighbourhood meeting on the problem, Thursday June 21. If you miss that but want more information, call Rob at 416/531-2468.

Ross Stuart, a friend of the park, builds beautiful spruce-strip canoes by hand. If this is the summer you want to take up canoeing with your family, check out his web site at www.geocities.com/rosbiltcanoe or call him at 416/531-2799.

Jane LowBeer, our newsletter illustrator, will be showing and selling her art at the annual Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition at Toronto City Hall, July 6,7,8.


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