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Wading Pool
The Wading pool
Latest News
July 8, 2016, e-mail from Peter White, Parks general supervisor
"We are committing to the removal of the current surface material of the wading pool in 2017. This will leave the surface as bare concrete with the hope being that it is less slippery than the existing surface.
posted November 11, 2012
Can we turn the clock back on Wading Pools?
Since Toronto Public Health got much more involved with the wading pools a few years ago, these once well-used neighborhood play pools have become a lot less enjoyable for families. Click to read more...
slide show: rescue our wading pools
The Dufferin Grove Park Wading Pool, before 2012
1930's history
S.H.Armstrong was the parks commissioner in the 1930s. Here are his rules for playground supervisors, [Toronto archives Box #14661-3, 1932]
“Rain or shine, playgrounds are supervised just the same and all apparatus ready for use…As soon as the supervisor goes on duty, she hangs baby swings, unlocks slide and teeters and puts out pails and shovels….If boys or girls are troublesome, man supervisor will visit the parents. ….[In wading pool] wading only is allowed; no regulation bathing suits; or old clothes used as bathing suits; no change of clothes. If children get clothing wet then out they come. Children 5 years and under may wear sun suits… Lady supervisor does not give any equipment to boys, on man’s morning off or any other time.”
Note that the lady gets one evening off in one week, then in alternate weeks she gets two evenings off. Otherwise she works until 8.30 p.m. whereas the man is down to work until dark. Both man and lady supervisors have to fill out daily reports, which includes census and “dramatic story telling, when taken.” The lady is not allowed to eat her lunch in the playground building but presumably the man is. But neither are allowed to go play tennis at lunch nor to “have men or lady friends come to the playground or in the playground building.”
posted May 1, 2004
[July 2003] The many joys of water in the park
Our wading pool
From our 2002-2003 newsletters
On the first hot day this season, Sunday June 22, there was water all over the park - not a flood, but a stream of good uses of the water that comes to us from Lake Ontario. In the sandpit by the playground, the hose was connected to the tap we bought from Lee Valley Tools. All day, between 10 and 30 kids (and some of their parents) were making channels for a river system - with lots of bridges -that wound through the sandpit and out into further "rivers" leading south. A sprinkler was set up in the wading pool (which was not yet open), and kids were not only running through the sprinkler but also finding out all the ways in which a hose could be kinked to change the water flow and trick people. Up by the pizza oven there was another sprinkler. Kids ran through that one too, and so did the performers from Clay and Paper Theatre when they'd finished their parade through Councillor Silva's annual Summerfest flea market. To the north of the rink house, the Eagles soccer club was running a car wash. They sudsed tow trucks as well as the cars they flagged down at the Dufferin mall light, and at the end they also sudsed each other. Read more of this story in our newsletter excerpts from 2002-2003 >>
Wading Pool News
Wading Pool Renovation Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 Read more
2012 to the present Read more