Visitors: Calvin Kangara and Prof. Stuart Marwick recently spent a Saturday observing the bread baking at the small bake oven. They are members of the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa (ICCAF) Kenyan Working Group. They want to set up a bread-making cooperative in Kenya, called Mkate Wetu ("our bread"), to be located in Mathare Valley, the main slum area of Kenya with a population of 500,000. Our park ovens are of interest because they burn wood very efficiently and they store the resulting heat for a very long time. Wood is very scarce in Kenya now because of the population pressure.

Prof. Marwick began his involvement with Kenya when he was still teaching at the York University Faculty of Environmental Studies. York sent him to Kenya when it was funded by CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency) to open up a satellite campus in Nairobi. Mr.Kangara, who came from the Mathare Valley, was working as a community organizer with various non-governmental organizations in Kenya. He has been studying in Canada since 1994 to prepare himself further for this work. When the two colleagues were here during the baking, they spent much time going over the oven plans and speculating on the possibilities, for instance, of building an oven in a schoolyard, so that the schoolchildren would be able to have a hot breakfast of corn porridge made overnight in the oven.

For more information, contact them at 416/465-8073 or 416/922-8826.

Pizza-oven keys: Four people are now in training to learn how to make pizza in the small oven and get their own oven keys. Judy Simutis has completed her two-session course. On her first practice day, Judy and a friend made a small mountain of pizza for the dog walkers (and their dogs).

Judy sent us this note, about the friend who helped her:

"When the Moon Hits the Sky like a Big Pizza Pie thats Amore"

"Honourable mention must be given to my "Right Hand Pizza Man," Gary McDade, who sacrificially gave his time, talents, and charcoal fingers creating signature perfect pizzas. A Connoisseur of this Italian culinary specialty he defied merciless heat, sustained a singed finger, and deftly spun pizza for man/ beast unto the end. I applaud and thank you for traveling so far to help me; for without you there would have been no pizza. Now that's Amore!!!"

About 15 people and 15 dogs came to the rink house at Judy's invitation, to eat all this pizza. The dog pizzas had a thick layer of hamburger meat on them, and although the hamburger pizzas looked a bit odd, the dogs evidently thought that humans had finally learned how to cook.

May events:

May 12: the city's annual neighbourhood clean-up day. To find out how to take part, call Rita DeMelo at Councillor Mario Silva's office at 416/392-7012. They are also looking for people to have a meeting about the southwest bus shelter, to discuss a new shelter and improvements to that part of the park. If you want to take part, call Rita at the same number.

May 12: The Geneaction Group plans childrens crafts, face painting, and storytelling about genetically engineered foods, as well as an information table, between 10-4. This group was part of last year's "Fair Fare fair," a very enjoyable environmental event.

May 26: Dover Gardens Nursery Co-op Funday: This wonderful annual neighbourhood event is now in its fourth year. They plan to have crafts, a raffle, face painting for kids, tarot reading, espresso for the grown-ups, a plant table with bedding plants, and a no-nuts bake sale. 10-2.

May 26, 1-4: Thinking locally. A pizza oven make-your-own pizza afternoon for people who went to the Quebec City Trade Agreement protest and also for people who want to meet them. Two former staff from the park went: Margie Rutledge and Kate Cayley. An informal pizza lunch for talking about: what did it mean? and: what local thinking and action makes sense now? More information: 416/392-0913.

Permits for park events: The City of Toronto permit department uses one standard approach for all event permit applications, whether huge corporately sponsored events or a small neighbourhood nursery school annual cookie sale. They require all groups to have $1,000,000 of insurance. This normally costs between $300 to $500. Recently several small community groups cancelled their Dufferin Park events when they found out the insurance cost. This is a shame, because small neighbourhood events are a gift to the park: they make it lively and fun.

If a small group wants to hold an event: their best route is to go directly through the Friends of Dufferin Grove Park. Contact them through park staff Johanne DeCastro at the park clubhouse: 416/392-0913. That way the parks existing volunteer insurance can cover the event (since most of such events are really like volunteer park programming for children and families), and small groups can afford to hold their events.

Calling all worn-out pots and pans: Please donate any pots and pans you no longer need to the park sand-pit playground area. Children have so much amusement playing "kitchen" in the sand-pit, but we can never keep enough pots around. So if you burn a pot, or can't sell your old ones, bring them to the park. We can also use small shovels and pails.

Forestry Department: our heroes. Every spring there is a quest for new tipi poles for the sand pit. This year the Forestry Department staff have been doing intensive tree pruning at Dufferin Grove park. The staff have gone to extra trouble to pick out the straightest branches and trim them down. So now we have a great new supply of tipi poles. In addition, one of the forestry workers is a scout leader. In his lunch hour he built a sample scout tipi beside the sandpit, to show the most solid way to make such a structure. He also gave us good advice on where to get scout literature showing different kinds of branch structures. Well have some posted on the park fence soon.

Note: please do not remove the shovels from the sand pit. They are not left there by mistake. They are meant for the kids to build with. The sand pit is an adventure playground area designed for children old enough to handle real shovels.

Mimo is back: In the last two years, during warm weather, Mimo, the old man who always carries a box of cardboard, has done so much damage with his habit of plugging the mens toilets (with paper and pieces of cardboard) that they have often been locked, awaiting repair. Mimo disappears in winter, but now he's returned. Mimo laughs when we tell him to stop damaging the toilets. How can we stop him? This year there is a huge children's soccer program in west end parks, including ours: we need the use of our park washrooms. This is the year to fix the problem. Any ideas? Call Johanne at the park club house: 416/392-0913.

Garden news: Arie Kemp has planted out ten flats of annuals from High Park Greenhouse. He has done lots of other things as well (dug new beds, repaired the boards on his raised beds, converted the herb garden to a rose garden, started to seed): following Arie around can be exhausting. Gene Threndyle has worked with recreation staff to build a farm fence around the southwest native-species garden and has planted three large flowering plums and a hawthorne bush there. The marsh fountain is due to be reconnected on May 3, by Gene and the parks plumbing staff. Jung Yoon has started putting in her plants near the chainlink fence. Ben Figueredo has pruned the grape vines on the fence: he pointed out how they "cry" and show they are alive, after theyve been pruned. Annick Mitchell and Jutta Mason have taken charge of the vegetable gardens again. (The salad seeds have gone in and the seed potatoes have arrived in the mail, but we have to wait for the last frost to plant them). Anyone interested in food gardening can call Johanne at the park clubhouse for more information: 416/392-0913.

Where to get the best plants: This neighbourhood is fortunate in having the wonderful plant outlet at Fiesta Farms Garden Centre. The selection of perennials and native species is spectacular. Everything weve bought there, when the park had garden money, has done well. The perennial manager is Margaret Serrao, and her number, if you want to ask her anything, is 416/537-1244, ext.130. (This is not paid advertising, and the nursery has never given us any free stuff, but we just think they are terrific.)

Stand-off with the Parks Department maintenance crew:

The philosopy of the parks department maintenance crew is that when a garden is put in a park by volunteers, it is no longer the city's responsibility to maintain that area. This means that often trash is not picked out of the community flower beds by city workers, and it also means that if a volunteer gardener comes and weeds a garden and puts the weeds in a pile beside the garden, the city workers are told not to pick up the pile.

The volunteer gardeners are already offering their time as a gift, so its not always realistic to tell them that they must also drag their clippings to the edge of the park for pick-up. (Despite what anyone fantasizes about "community participation," remember that there are only really five people who do gardening in the park with all those gardens). Since the city staff already move around the park with their truck picking up garbage anyway, it would seem that they could pick up the weed piles too. But so far, there's no agreement on this point. That's why two piles of weeds and trimmings have been lying near the wildflower signs for four weeks. It's a stand-off.

As it stands, the only long-term solution would be to remove all community gardens from parks, and then the city workers would only have the grass and the trees to maintain. No more disagreements. But at the "Fate of the Park" meeting, maintaining the gardens with city cooperation was listed as high priority. What will happen next? More on this next month.

Weekly pizza days: Johanne DeCastro has started doing the Tuesday and Wednesday "open ovens" again. During May, the hours will be from 11.30 a.m. to 1.30p.m. on those two days, weather permitting. For $2.00, you can buy a ball of dough, roll it out, cover it with tomato sauce and cheese, and put it in the hot pizza oven. (Bring your own exotic toppings). The pizzas are ready in 3-4 minutes, and they are delicious.

High School students: are you worried the strike brought down your marks? Free park tutoring at the park clubhouse, this month only. Jerry Shaw, a final-year intern at the University of Torontos bachelor of education (Teachers College) program, will be in the park every week night from 5-8.30. He is willing to do intensive, free tutoring of high school level English and History. Jerry is also available to tutor new speakers of English. Ask for him in the park (hes the guy with all the keys) or call and leave a message at the park clubhouse 416/392-0913 or with Jerry directly at 416/306-0837. (Tutoring will only be one part of Jerry's role at the park. Hell also be making evening campfires in the campfire circle. The first one is Thursday May 10 at 8 p.m. Jutta Mason will be there too, to roast something.)

Follow-up on the Refrigeration Regulations for outdoor ice rinks:

This is what we know so far:

the existing regulations are 40 years old, our sophisticated rink equipment is 9 years old.

The Technical Standards and Safety Authority recommended to the Ministry of Consumer and Business Relations that the regulations should stop requiring a worker to babysit a machine that doesn't need him.

The Ontario Recreation Facilities Association decided that they will offer courses to license such workers (refrigeration compressor operators) , and therefore asked the Ministry to require even more of them, now for even single-pad ice rinks. This would make it even more expensive for the city to run its rinks.

The more restricted regulations implicitly encourage an industry-wide return to Freon refrigeration, by making the use of ammonia refrigeration more expensive (the redundant staffing requirement). Freon gives us trouble with the ozone, but so far there have been no lawsuits on that basis.

Statistics on dangerous episodes related to ice rink ammonia equipment are not available from either the provincial government or the city. That is, these arguments over legislative changes are not based on any recorded data of rink-related experience. This data is either not collected at all or not analyzed by anyone.

The government will take its next steps at the beginning of June. For more information, e-mail Jutta Mason at dancay@interlog.com.

Urban Parks Institute: This is a New York-based group that is part of the Project for Public Spaces. They are interested in cooking with fire in parks. They have a very active web site, and from May 21 to June 11 they will feature an "ask-the-expert" option on this subject, with Jutta Mason and our park as the "expert." If you want to take a look, their web address is http://www.urbanparks.org.They'll also be linking to Emily Visser's website for our park. So people in Tuscon Arizona will know that Judy Simutis and Gary McDade made pizza for the people and the dogs at Dufferin Grove Park, and maybe they'll want to do it too.....

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