friends of dufferin grove park
October 2003 Newsletter

In this issue:

Bike tie-up rings come to Dufferin park

Some months ago, park friend Kyla Dixon-Muir told us how to contact the city's Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure Unit, to finally arrange for some real bike tie-ups near the rink house. We called for the forms, filled them out, sent them off, and now their staff person David Tomlinson has called us to tell us that we'll be getting five bike rings near the beginning of October - and more after that if we need them. The first ones will be at the edge of the sidewalk by the rink house. This is excellent. Finally there will be a place for market goers and skaters to tie up.

Food news

FARMERS' MARKET: the market will move closer to the rink house now that the cooler weather is coming. Because there are more vendors, some will be inside and some of the hardy ones will be outside against the front wall (at least until Christmas) and some may be in the garage. After Christmas everyone will be inside. There will be fewer farmers but the market will carry on year-round. November 7 is the market's one-year anniversary: champagne all around? If you want to be on the weekly market-information list, e-mail Jutta at dufferinpark@dufferinpark.ca and she'll put you on. FARMERS' MARKET EVERY THURSDAY 3.30 TO 7 P.M.

FRIDAY NIGHT SUPPER: It's too dark and windy in the park to have any more suppers outside. The suppers will resume when the rink season starts, inside the rink house, with a warm fire in the wood stove and candles on the tables. For more information call the park at 416/392-0913.

October events:

ABOUT HERE: Art Architecture Landscape for and about Dupont west.

Dyan Marie, who started the Dupont/Lansdowne area neighbourhood group DIG IN several years ago, invites people from the neighbourhood to the launch of a new art gallery, with a display about the area put together by various architects, artists, and landscape architects, some of them from around here. There are some really interesting-sounding things displayed at this exhibition, for example:

Attila Burka - Concept Plans for the General Electric site at Lansdowne and Dupont.// Guy Walter: Urban Surface, Planning, Landscape Architecture, Design with DIG IN - Concept drawings for Community Green Walking System "WALK HERE"- a community and public art plan connecting internal neighborhood sites to the city at large// Sheldon Levitt, Les Klein: Quadrangle Architects- Concept Plans for the redevelopment of the Galleria Mall site at Dupont and Dufferin // Jim Melvin, Fung Lee, Alissa North, Sam Bietenholz: PMA Landscape Architects - Ideas for improving local parks: concepts for play, communication and landscape interventions // Dyan Marie: artist and direction for DIG IN: Dupont Improvement Group - Photographic work documents: accidental gardens and cuts made into CN /CP rail lines fences to gain access to green space and reconnect neighbourhoods // Richard Rhodes: artist, writer and editor of Canadian Art magazine - Photographs of sky formations above the horizon line of the Galleria Mall and Wallace Emerson Park

The location is 1444 Dupont Street, Building D, Unit 31, and if you want more information, you can call 416-531-1215, or go to their web site: www.digin.ca SATURDAY OCTOBER 4, FROM 2 UNTIL 5 P.M.

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT:

every year the organizers of this women's march choose one park to gather in before they go out on the streets, and this year it's ours. They will be starting at the fire circle with food, speakers/demonstrations and music, at 7 P.M. SATURDAY OCTOBER 4.

FARMERS' MARKET TASTING FAIR

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Chefs and all our regular farmers will be paired at this special event: every table will offer some utterly delicious food item ($2 each) featuring one or more of the ingredients that farmer produces. Those market vendors who are bakers or caterers will offer $2 portions of their best dishes or baked goods.

For children, there will also be pizza-making at the oven in case the special foods are a little too adventuresome. In addition, there will be little pumpkins to carve at the pumpkin-table, to get ready for the special event of the evening: a candle-light pumpkin-sailing on the wading pool (and a bonfire with marshmallows), weather permitting. Clay and Paper Theatre will be preparing costumes for the big Oct.25 parade over by the field house, so there's lots happening in the park that day.

But the main thing is that there will be good food, lots of friendly chefs, and lots of chance to discuss things with the farmers and with your neighbours. This event is produced by Friday night supper chef Dan DeMatteis. Co-sponsored by Slow Food Ontario (you'll be able to find out about this great Italian organization too, if you haven't heard about them yet). SUNDAY OCTOBER 19 from ONE P.M.TO FOUR P.M., near the ovens (or in the rink house if it rains). Return for Pumpkin lantern sailing and marshmallow roast at the wading pool at 6.30 P.M.

Big parade

FOURTH ANNUAL NIGHT OF DREAD PARADE: David Anderson and Clay and Paper Theatre will be doing it again, along with all those many people who come out to make masks and costumes prior to the day, or who just show up for their stilts or their outfits on the day of the parade. The day is as usual - after 3 p.m., get your costume, put it on, eat free food, practice your walk, admire the other strange characters, get in the line-up, hit the streets at 6. The parade route is the same as last year - up Gladstone, along Bloor to Grace, down Grace to College, along College to Dovercourt, up Dovercourt to Dewson, along Dewson to Havelock, up Havelock to the park. And then the next part of the fun starts. The parade will go through the park mocking their fears, then to the fire circle and down into the valley to honour the ancestors, then back up to the oven to dance with death and eat the roast pig and the park bread (and the sweet bread of the dead). The music will be by the Escola de Samba, by Samba Elegua, and the Jeremiahs. A wonderful, huge, amazing time for all - everyone is welcome to participate in this community parade. And if you want to have even more fun, come by the park on Saturday or Sunday afternoons the weekends preceding. You can help make costumes and help be an organizer. If you have a talent for making yourself useful you could be a parade marshall on the day of the parade. David says they need about 20 such calm, level-headed people to organize everyone else on the day of the parade - are you one of those people? They'd love to see you and let your talents shine. To find out more, call 416/ 537-9105 or visit their web site www.clayandpapertheatre.org.

Parade and follow-up festivities: SATURDAY OCTOBER 25, leaving the park at 6 P.M. SHARP from the basketball court, returning to the park after and celebrating until 9 PM.

Landmark court case

Landmark court case about the Dufferin Grove Park pit bull attack: On September 8 in a provincial court room in Scarborough, there was an all-day court case: City of Toronto versus Wahid Bayan. The court met to decide on the fate of two pit bull dogs which were involved in a very serious dog fight at Dufferin Grove Park on June 30. The incident occurred after an hour's tense stand-off beforehand, during which some park regulars (one of whose dogs had been attacked but not wounded by the pit bulls), tried to get the police to come and deal with the pit bulls' apparently drunken and verbally abusive owner. The police, short-staffed because of a parade in another part of town, did not respond to repeated calls. After an hour the pit bulls' owner is alleged to have purposely let them off their leads. The dogs ran to the other dog walkers and one of the pit bulls attacked another one of their dogs (a German shepherd) and clamped his jaws on the dog's head. The German shepherd's owner, as he tried to protect his dog, himself had his clothes torn and got a puncture wound in his arm and later had to have two stitches. The German shepherd had an $850 vet bill because his ear was partly bitten off and had to be re-attached.

The pit bull owner, whom no one had ever seen in the park before and who appeared to be very drunk and very angry at the time of the attack, was arrested and spent almost two weeks in Don Jail before he got bail. He is facing the serious charge of assault with a weapon (i.e. his dogs), which could give him 5 years in prison. However, that criminal charge was not up for discussion on September 8. It was the animal trial concerning the dogs only. But the crown prosecutor Ms.Randi Kurwoski was laying the groundwork for the criminal trial. She underlined that even though no person was seriously hurt on June 30, if a child had been there with a dog, or if there had been a small woman trying to protect her dog, they might have been badly hurt or even killed. The prosecutor asked for the dogs to be destroyed, even though the usual practice of Animal Control is to issue a muzzle order the first time a dog attacks (and if damage to either the other dog or the person is not extensive.) But the crown pointed out that the lasting psychic trauma to both the dog and the people involved on that day (several people were forced to beat one dog with a shovel and an umbrella to get it to release the other dog's head) was great. And additionally, the crown argued, what could have happened was much worse.

The judge agreed, and ordered the dogs to be destroyed. This case underlines two important, perhaps new principles at Animal Control:

1. Zero tolerance to dog bites even if a first occurrence. The judge gave it as his opinion that once a dog has tasted blood, it will want to do so again and therefore it needs to be put down. And even the second dog, which did not bite, was seen as a sufficient threat that the judge felt it must also be destroyed.

2. The second important principle is: that the risk of what a dog might do is as important as the actual physical damage it might have inflicted. In this case the actual physical damage to a person required two stitches. But the economic harm was greater - this dog owner missed 3 days of work, and had to pay $850 to the vet. The witnesses testified at this trial that the psychic damage to all involved was even greater. And the risk of physical harm from the two dogs if other, smaller people had been there, was seen as potentially catastrophic. Hence the judge's decision.

Animal Control and the problem of dogs in public space:

During the Dufferin Park pit bull attack court case, after the witnesses had testified and had left the trial to go back downtown, the judge called a lunch break. Everyone else disappeared for an hour and a half, except for Jutta Mason, covering this case for the park newsletter, and the defendant, Wahid Bayan, the owner of the pit bulls. There was nothing to do except sit out in the parking lot on a low wall. Jutta asked Wahid (now of course completely sober) how on earth he had made such a mess on June 30. Some of the answers he gave made no sense to her. One thing she learned was especially a puzzle - Wahid showed Jutta his cell phone bill for June 30. During the hour of the stand-off when the other dog walkers were calling the police, Wahid, standing across the park at the field house with his dogs on their leashes, was also calling the police. In fact, he called 911 eight times in that hour. In the hour before he let his dogs off their leashes, Wahid was under the impression that he needed police help as much as the dog walkers did.

The court had been uninterested in this detail, but it confounded Jutta. How could it be understood? Wahid told Jutta he has been in Toronto for seventeen years (from Uganda), so he must have a basic understanding of the local culture and our social signals, even when he's drunk. (?) But he told Jutta a number of other things during this hour's conversation that made her wonder whether there was something more complicated (cultural?) involved in this incident. He also told her he had been prevented by court order from talking to any of the witnesses all these months but that he would like to talk to them and he would like to work out an arrangement to pay the vet bill, if that could save his dogs from being killed. When Jutta approached the crown prosecutor, Ms.Randi Kurwoski, after lunch to see whether there was any chance of the judge delaying his sentencing until the witnesses could be asked about Wahid's request, Ms.Kurwoski appeared so shocked that Jutta would ask such a thing that she not only said, no, but she refused to speak to Jutta any more. So the judge gave his verdict and everyone went home.

And later, when Jutta told the witnesses of the suggestion she had tried to make after talking to Wahid, their reaction was not dissimilar to the crown's. They said, with fairness, that this offer from Wahid was too little, too late. But they also told Jutta that she had failed to understand one important thing: the crown prosecutor had been working for many weeks to prepare this case in order to get at some of the larger dangers that dogs can pose in public space, and they felt that this was no time to de-rail that effort.

And indeed there is evidently a substantial project going on here. The city is spending a large amount of money - even at the animal trial, there were two other crown prosecutors present, being trained at how to handle such cases. Taking into account the bill for Wahid's time in Don Jail awaiting bail, and for all the people already involved in moving this case along, the case will have cost the city some hundreds of thousands by the time the criminal trial is done. (That's not counting the cost of maintaining Wahid in prison if he gets a jail sentence, and then whatever remedial work he requires later, or deportation.) But the cost will be a good investment for the city if it succeeds in laying the groundwork for a new way of addressing dog problems.

So this case may be a landmark, as well as a sign of a reversal. Up until now, Animal Control has had a pretty hands-off position vis-à-vis dog problems in the park. Indeed, one of the other dog walkers present at the incident on June 30 tells of her unsuccessful previous attempts to get the city to issue a muzzle order only a few years ago. For the fourth time, a pit bull had attacked and injured a dog (in this case, her dog) in the park. But Animal Control informed this complainant that since her dog had also been off leash at the time of the attack, they might decide to fine her a substantial amount as well, for breaking the leash by-law. And there were other rules for filing the complaint that were so complicated that this dog walker just gave up.

Now, however, this court case has highlighted several important principles: zero tolerance for biting dogs, and a risk-based approach to the damage dogs may do rather than what they have done. Therefore, since many dogs of many breeds have been known to bite, there is a serious implied instruction here that the leash by-laws, currently not effective, MUST be enforced in our park (and other parks) now. Since all dogs carry a risk of biting other dogs or people, they must all be on a leash to minimize this risk. This is presumably the intent of the by-law that we already have in place, but it has not been enforced.

One of the main witnesses in the June 30 case reminded Jutta forcefully that one should not forget the fear experienced at the park by many people, parents of small children or people who don't feel comfortable with certain (or any) dogs. It was an apt reminder, since over the years many people have reported their unhappiness about unleashed dogs in the park. On the other hand, the American Association of Chiefs of Police recently took a position supporting dog walking as one of the best ways of increasing park safety at those times when parks may otherwise be dangerously empty. Since dog walkers are likely to spend more time in parks if their dogs can run around a bit, it may be that park safety will be adversely affected if Animal Control returns to enforcing the law. However, there's always a tradeoff, and difficult decisions have to be made. There cannot be one law for Wahid Bayan and his pit bulls and another law for everyone else.

And yet, at the end, one still has to wonder: how many degrees of distance are there between this current scenario, and what would have happened if by some good fortune the police had arrived when first called? What if they had driven Wahid Bayan home with his dogs before everyone got so angry, to sleep off his drunkenness, and with a caution to stay away from parks and keep his dogs leashed? Are there better ways, than court contests, to accomplish social peace?

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

A couple of times a year the scouts come and have a campfire at Dufferin Grove Park. Their scout leader Bob Edwards called to say that when the group was in the park last spring they discovered the sand pit and the water tap. The little scouts were all so busy making bridges and rivers that he could hardly get them to the campfire. Bob said that where he lives in the Annex, the new plastic-and-metal playgrounds have little in them for older kids and so it was a nice surprise to come to our park.

The troup that came here to the park is called the 62nd Toronto Scouts. They have a group of boys and girls aged 5 to 7 in "Beavers" and another group of boys and girls aged 8 to 10 in "Cubs." The scout slogan is "bring on the adventure," and Bob says that's what they do. At their meetings they have games and they also work for badges of competence, in everything from bike riding and maintenance to knot-tying to cooking (and over a hundred other badges). But they also have outings to parks like ours and once every season they go for an overnight camping trip, usually with lots of parents along too.

Bob says he was a scout when he was a kid, and then when his own son got to the same age, Bob wanted him to get involved. So Bob decided to help out and became a scout leader himself. Helping out is apparently pretty central to scouting. Their motto is "do a good deed every day." (Some things don't change!) So in exchange for having their campfire at our park they came back again to do some litter-picking.

If you know a child who would like to join the scouts, they meet on Wednesdays at Chalmers Hall (corner of Hepbourne and Dovercourt) at 6.45 to 7.30 p.m. for the Beavers and 7 to 8 p.m. for the Cubs. It costs $100 a year, plus they have to buy a vest and a cap for Beavers and a shirt for Cubs. If you want to know more, you can call Bob Edwards at 416/ 413-1579, or e-mail him at watt.edwards@sympatico.ca.

Skating news:

DUFFERIN RINK OPENS: SATURDAY NOV. Nov.29 AT 9 A.M. Same story as last year and every year: pleasure skating all the time (the gate is never closed), shinny hockey on the hockey side Monday to Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., some shinny permits 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., fire in the wood stove inside, chess and checkers, some toys for the little kids, organic coffee and hot chocolate and mini-pizzas and slices of fresh park bread, snow hills for climbing and sliding outside, and free skating under the sky in the bracing Canadian winter. Fun!

BEGINNERS' SHINNY FOR ADULTS with Lawrence Barichello. SUNDAY NOV.30, 7-8.30 P.M. This was a hit last year and it filled up really fast. If you want to get started playing shinny hockey this year, get your place early. Lawrence is taking registration now. The class costs about $70 for 12 weeks, and you need skates and preferably a helmet and a stick if you have one. Otherwise Lawrence has extra. Men and women are both welcome. Call Lawrence at 416/530-4810 or e-mail him at lawrence@pathcom.com.


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