A big thank you to everyone who came out to last night's dinner and campfire at Campbell. The event was a success and it was wonderful to see so many people in the park.
Last night a lot of people thanked me for organizing the event. It's always nice to be thanked, but I was only one of several staff who worked on the dinner. My role was the most visible because I did the promotion. Behind the scenes there were Mayssan, Jutta, Nayssam, Ava, Espe, Marina and Yo Utano, the Dufferin Grove cook who made the lasagne that proved so popular.
That was excellent! I was amazed by the turnout too. I would guess there were well over 100 people there. Great to see so many familiar faces and to meet new people too. The lasagne was delicious. I even got schooled in a checkers game. :) Too bad I couldn't stick around for very long.
Hope this can keep happening! Thanks so much to Michael and anyone else involved in organizing it.
Went to view this centre. What a wonderful space! The staff is very knowledgeable with excellent credentials. Two Early Childhood Educators working together in one space, you wouldn't find that at other home care settings. Good luck to the both of you.
We hope to see you tonight at Campbell Park when we have our community dinner and campfire, 6:30-10pm. The response has been good. It should be a great night. If you're going to the Digin meeting, we hope you'll drop by the park afterwards.
They're working on getting a market in The Junction (or elsewhere in Ward 13). Website for this initiative is here: http://www.ward13market.com/
They might have some good info on how to go about this.
But that also shows that the JT is getting surrounded by various farmers markets within walking distance: High park, Sorauren Park, Dufferin Grove Park, etc.
I wasn't around when Dufferin Grove established its market so I can't say how it got started. If you like, you can send your question to market@dufferinpark.ca The email will go to Anne Freeman the market manager. She might have some suggestions. You might also contact the people at Sorauren. Their market is newer. From what I've heard though, establishing a market in a public park isn't easy. There are a lot of bureaucratic hurdles. Another challenge would be finding vendors whose market schedule isn't booked up.
Another event that will be taking place in Campbell Park over the summer is the Ontario Early Years program. The staff from DPNC will be holding their Early Years program in Campbell Park on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:30 am to 11:30 am starting the first week of July and will also be in Perth Park on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same times. This program is for parents of children 0-6 years.
The Friday Night Suppers at Dufferin Grove are awesome. Glad to see this happening at Campbell too. It's great to see people coming together to make things like this happen. Have to give credit to Ana Bailao and her staff for helping to get the kitchen upgrades installed too.
Thanks for the extra info. I lived next door to Dufferin Grove for 5 years and have just recently moved to this area. I am so happy to hear that some of what I loved so much about Dufferin grove is going to be close to our new home too! See you on Tuesday.
I'm seeing lots of Twittering about Jonah Schein winning the NDP nomination for Davenport tonight. I guess I was wrong about Paul Pighin already having the nomination earlier.
This makes it more interesting, as he's a pretty well-known community organizer / activist.
I run a local listerserve: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloorlansdowne/ Many of the people who join are new to the area. For their benefit, I wrote a short introduction to Campbell Park. My apologies to everyone who has heard this story many times before.
Last week I sent a message to this list about a campfire and community
dinner at Campbell Park 6:30-10pm on Tuesday June 14. I know there
are many people who have just moved to the area. I'm sure some of you
have never heard of Campbell Park and have no idea where it is. i
thought I'd send another message giving a little information about the
park. I'm hoping this will encourage you to come out on Tuesday
because I think the campfire is going to be a lot of fun.
The park is located on Campbell Av, which is a north-south street west
of Lansdowne, east of Dundas, north of Bloor and south of Dupont. The
address is 255 Campbell Av and you can use Google maps to get a better
idea of where it is. (Warning: Google puts the arrow slightly north of
the park.) Campbell Av connects with Dupont but it doesn't quite
stretch to Bloor. )
Campbell has a wading pool and an outdoor skating rink. In winter, it
is a popular hockey spot with pleasure skating on the weekend. In
summer the park is used for soccer by SC Toronto, formerly the Toronto
Eagles.
The skating rink used to be a rough place where pleasure skaters
weren't welcome. I've heard stories of angry hockey players chasing
away people who have shown up for pleasure skating. However, that
started to change 4 years ago when some of the adult recreation staff
from Dufferin Grove were sent to the rink. We set aside 2 hours on
Saturday for pleasure skating, which we strictly enforced. During
pleasure skating we had a weekly campfire. At first turnout was low,
but attendance began to pick up. The Saturday campfire and skate began
to attract a large crowd of regulars and so this past winter we added
two hours of pleasure skating on Sunday, which also has steady
attendance. People liked the winter campfires so much that some said
we should do them in summer too.
Another thing the Dufferin staff did was open a small snackbar, which
proved popular. However, Campbell's rinkhouse didn't have a kitchen so
staff were limited in what they could offer. Over the past four years
staff, a community group called CELOS and some residents have lobbied
the city for an electrical upgrade and sinks. When Anna Bailao was
elected she took an interest in the rinks and her office managed to
persuade the city to do the upgrade. Now Campbell has a kitchen.
That's a cause for celebration. That's why this Tuesday we're going to
have a campfire and community dinner.
I went to the one on June 2 at Metro reference Library and found the same. Restrictive choices, facilitators writing up some comments and not others so as to end up with the same watered down themes. Councillors like Janet Davis floated and seemed to try to direct citizen responses (whose input was this supposed to be anyway?) What a waste of an opportunity though, as people were straining to give constructive ideas but were stymied by the format.
Interesting note: Near the end, a young woman tried to hand out postcards calling for citizens to stop the service cuts, and was harassed and almost thrown out by a security guard, until I intervened and he noticed tv cameras around, then backed off.
Funny note: One table put Police Services in the 'not needed' column because they were upset with the large contract wage increase. Another asked if they could put Mayor Rob Ford in that column too.
We attended the core services meeting on Wednesday night too.
It was a sham.
The 3 Councillors were forced to make citizens participate in a process that was pre-ordained to favour a specific outcome and gave zero opportunity for the citizens who had come out to voice concerns, put ideas on the record, or offer any kind of solution or idea outside of pre-printed cards that people were supposed to shuffle around like children.
It was insulting to the intelligence of citizens and a consultation in name only. Regrdless of ones views the people were not heard at this meeting. A serious issue was reduced to a series of cue cards. It was like an "election" in a dictatorship where there is only one name on the ballot. The online survey and these meetings are a complete fraud.
I felt sorry that the Councillors had to officially pretend that this made any sense.
This is a note I recieved about the Core Services meeting from Carina, an active resident nearby.
Subject: FYI - a better example of how to gather public input?
Hi all,
I attended last night's local edition of the city's rushed, chaotic and arguably nearly useless "public consultation" on the core services review.
(** PLEASE NOTE: this is NOT a criticism of the three councillors who presented the session (thanks to them all for setting up this session for us). What was quite obvious was that their hands were tied by the ill-considered structure of the process that has been imposed upon us.)
As a positive alternative, allow me to bring to your attention the process used for a new street proposed to run along the south side of Liberty Village (where currently most streets dead-end at the Lakeshore rail tracks right now.) I invite you to check out the materials on this page: http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/libertynewst/
I don't know how the session was run, since I did not attend, but at first glance, it looks like it was very effective! The "dotmocracy" sheets were especially cool. The ideas that are presented for comment appear to have been created at the workshop by participants themselves (instead of pre-set by staff), and the visual nature of the "agree/disagree" "voting" is very effective. They also give great opportunity for additional comments.
Anyway, just thought I'd highlight this as a possible alternative process for consultation (and one that the city already uses elsewhere!).
"The city now admits Richardson got the grant, but says other needed approvals were not obtained, and the mural was markedly different from a submitted sketch. The artist agrees, saying he thought he had free rein with his oblique “anti-freewheeling capitalism” message. The episode exposed the fact that Toronto has no database of authorized murals; city staff are now looking at creating one."
You must like hearing yourself go on. I merely said that I think for a smart guy like Vic to be making a comment like he did to a serious topice like this and to mention what he did, he was mocking what people felt. Not everyone agrees with you Scott and I guess they are wrong to your eyes. people have other views, surprising hey.
Personally I don't care what you think, so it don't matter to me. You mention Tony R, your forgot Mario Silva anyone eles???
I think the 50 or 60 regular folks of all stripes who show up on their own time to volunteer on community issues year after year and do the heavy lifting of bringing improvement to the community are the real Pubas of the hood. I would also add some of the unsung heros at the Library and other service organizations and local businesses who have stuck their neck out to open businesses. And also the many City workers who have quietly done their work and responded to locals (I can list hundreds of examples). If you ever where involved in anything but self publicity stunts you might know them.
And it's Funny you calling Vic's comments stupid when it was Vic who originally volunteered to help you establish this website and paid for it out of his own pocket before you vanished after one meeting (as usual) leaving everybody else to (successfully) keep JT.ca going. Vic continues to pay for the hosting and a few others help out with monitoring the code of conduct, something you should know about since it seems to apply to you almost exclusively. Thanks to Vic JT.ca gets thousands of reads and presents good opinions, news, events, all with a local angle.The site is read by people not in the immediate area and everybody knows that all the politicians read it too. A big success. And as usual when there was actual work involved you vanished like Tony Ruprecht.
As everybody knows Jack, when the cameras go away, you go away.
Scott D., Sorry I didn't run it by you. I know you like to think you are the Grand Puba of JT.
It wasn't my idea Calling it the Raccoon Rally. Don't matter, I don't need to explain things to you. I have received ton's my emails from from strangers who are Tax paying Citizens of this city who are either on low income, seniors and single family earners who have damages to their property can't afford the extra expense. These home owners who have a geniune complaint and concerns about damage done to their property by raccoons.
FYI, This wasn't my idea. I got a call from some residents on Ranking asking for help, to help bring some attention to this incident with Mr Nguyen, many were mad about the arrest some felt it was an over kill. Mnay know the family and were suprised he got arrested been a family man and the only bread earner in the family.
Like me many on rankin or across the city don't support crueity to animals and I made that clear to the media and others who I spoke to, but this is a larger problem then everyone thinks like the emails I received explained. I don't believe My Nguyen is an isolated incident, nor will this be the last assult on raccoons. Home owners are frustrated and deserve the support or at least to be listen too. I hope I cleared a few things for you
I am also a home owner in the area and would never dream of beating a raccoon to death because they are damaging my property. There are measures one can take to try and deal appropriately with the situation. If you claim you are spending thousands of dollars to repair your house why don't you spend much less and have a professional come in and help you trap and relocate the offending animals.
Yeah the city should fix all our problems but I bet the biggest complainers don't want to pay more taxes do they? I am overrun with ants that are moving my dirt around - HELP, the government needs to do something!
A big thank you to everyone who came out to last night's dinner and campfire at Campbell. The event was a success and it was wonderful to see so many people in the park.
Last night a lot of people thanked me for organizing the event. It's always nice to be thanked, but I was only one of several staff who worked on the dinner. My role was the most visible because I did the promotion. Behind the scenes there were Mayssan, Jutta, Nayssam, Ava, Espe, Marina and Yo Utano, the Dufferin Grove cook who made the lasagne that proved so popular.
That was excellent! I was amazed by the turnout too. I would guess there were well over 100 people there. Great to see so many familiar faces and to meet new people too. The lasagne was delicious. I even got schooled in a checkers game. :) Too bad I couldn't stick around for very long.
Hope this can keep happening! Thanks so much to Michael and anyone else involved in organizing it.
-Vic
Wow, what a wonderful turnout! Thanks for organizing this. It was great to dine in the park with neighbours....
Went to view this centre. What a wonderful space! The staff is very knowledgeable with excellent credentials. Two Early Childhood Educators working together in one space, you wouldn't find that at other home care settings. Good luck to the both of you.
We hope to see you tonight at Campbell Park when we have our community dinner and campfire, 6:30-10pm. The response has been good. It should be a great night. If you're going to the Digin meeting, we hope you'll drop by the park afterwards.
They're working on getting a market in The Junction (or elsewhere in Ward 13). Website for this initiative is here:
http://www.ward13market.com/
They might have some good info on how to go about this.
But that also shows that the JT is getting surrounded by various farmers markets within walking distance: High park, Sorauren Park, Dufferin Grove Park, etc.
I wasn't around when Dufferin Grove established its market so I can't say how it got started. If you like, you can send your question to market@dufferinpark.ca The email will go to Anne Freeman the market manager. She might have some suggestions. You might also contact the people at Sorauren. Their market is newer. From what I've heard though, establishing a market in a public park isn't easy. There are a lot of bureaucratic hurdles. Another challenge would be finding vendors whose market schedule isn't booked up.
Hi Katie,
Thanks for sharing the information about Ontario Early Years in the park.
What steps would need to be taken for us to get a framers' market in Campbell park?
Another event that will be taking place in Campbell Park over the summer is the Ontario Early Years program. The staff from DPNC will be holding their Early Years program in Campbell Park on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:30 am to 11:30 am starting the first week of July and will also be in Perth Park on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same times. This program is for parents of children 0-6 years.
The Friday Night Suppers at Dufferin Grove are awesome. Glad to see this happening at Campbell too. It's great to see people coming together to make things like this happen. Have to give credit to Ana Bailao and her staff for helping to get the kitchen upgrades installed too.
Looking forward to this.
-Vic
Jonah has a pretty strong record of being active in the community and working to fight poverty. He has energy, new ideas, and likes electric trains.
Thanks for the extra info. I lived next door to Dufferin Grove for 5 years and have just recently moved to this area. I am so happy to hear that some of what I loved so much about Dufferin grove is going to be close to our new home too! See you on Tuesday.
I'm seeing lots of Twittering about Jonah Schein winning the NDP nomination for Davenport tonight. I guess I was wrong about Paul Pighin already having the nomination earlier.
This makes it more interesting, as he's a pretty well-known community organizer / activist.
I run a local listerserve: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloorlansdowne/ Many of the people who join are new to the area. For their benefit, I wrote a short introduction to Campbell Park. My apologies to everyone who has heard this story many times before.
I went to the one on June 2 at Metro reference Library and found the same. Restrictive choices, facilitators writing up some comments and not others so as to end up with the same watered down themes. Councillors like Janet Davis floated and seemed to try to direct citizen responses (whose input was this supposed to be anyway?) What a waste of an opportunity though, as people were straining to give constructive ideas but were stymied by the format.
Interesting note: Near the end, a young woman tried to hand out postcards calling for citizens to stop the service cuts, and was harassed and almost thrown out by a security guard, until I intervened and he noticed tv cameras around, then backed off.
Funny note: One table put Police Services in the 'not needed' column because they were upset with the large contract wage increase. Another asked if they could put Mayor Rob Ford in that column too.
Just an extra reminder as this got posted late about the Metrolinx Air Quality meting next week. Look in "Events"
We attended the core services meeting on Wednesday night too.
It was a sham.
The 3 Councillors were forced to make citizens participate in a process that was pre-ordained to favour a specific outcome and gave zero opportunity for the citizens who had come out to voice concerns, put ideas on the record, or offer any kind of solution or idea outside of pre-printed cards that people were supposed to shuffle around like children.
It was insulting to the intelligence of citizens and a consultation in name only. Regrdless of ones views the people were not heard at this meeting. A serious issue was reduced to a series of cue cards. It was like an "election" in a dictatorship where there is only one name on the ballot. The online survey and these meetings are a complete fraud.
I felt sorry that the Councillors had to officially pretend that this made any sense.
This is a note I recieved about the Core Services meeting from Carina, an active resident nearby.
Subject: FYI - a better example of how to gather public input?
Hi all,
I attended last night's local edition of the city's rushed, chaotic and arguably nearly useless "public consultation" on the core services review.
(** PLEASE NOTE: this is NOT a criticism of the three councillors who presented the session (thanks to them all for setting up this session for us). What was quite obvious was that their hands were tied by the ill-considered structure of the process that has been imposed upon us.)
As a positive alternative, allow me to bring to your attention the process used for a new street proposed to run along the south side of Liberty Village (where currently most streets dead-end at the Lakeshore rail tracks right now.) I invite you to check out the materials on this page: http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/libertynewst/
Note especially the feedback summary (http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/libertynewst/pdf/liberty-village...) and the "dot-mocracy" sheets (scanned here: http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/libertynewst/pdf/liberty_mar_1_2...)
I don't know how the session was run, since I did not attend, but at first glance, it looks like it was very effective! The "dotmocracy" sheets were especially cool. The ideas that are presented for comment appear to have been created at the workshop by participants themselves (instead of pre-set by staff), and the visual nature of the "agree/disagree" "voting" is very effective. They also give great opportunity for additional comments.
Anyway, just thought I'd highlight this as a possible alternative process for consultation (and one that the city already uses elsewhere!).
Cheers,
Carina
"The city now admits Richardson got the grant, but says other needed approvals were not obtained, and the mural was markedly different from a submitted sketch. The artist agrees, saying he thought he had free rein with his oblique “anti-freewheeling capitalism” message. The episode exposed the fact that Toronto has no database of authorized murals; city staff are now looking at creating one."
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1005032--whitewashing-a-mural-stirs-...
Whatever Scott!!!
You must like hearing yourself go on. I merely said that I think for a smart guy like Vic to be making a comment like he did to a serious topice like this and to mention what he did, he was mocking what people felt. Not everyone agrees with you Scott and I guess they are wrong to your eyes. people have other views, surprising hey.
Personally I don't care what you think, so it don't matter to me. You mention Tony R, your forgot Mario Silva anyone eles???
I think the 50 or 60 regular folks of all stripes who show up on their own time to volunteer on community issues year after year and do the heavy lifting of bringing improvement to the community are the real Pubas of the hood. I would also add some of the unsung heros at the Library and other service organizations and local businesses who have stuck their neck out to open businesses. And also the many City workers who have quietly done their work and responded to locals (I can list hundreds of examples). If you ever where involved in anything but self publicity stunts you might know them.
And it's Funny you calling Vic's comments stupid when it was Vic who originally volunteered to help you establish this website and paid for it out of his own pocket before you vanished after one meeting (as usual) leaving everybody else to (successfully) keep JT.ca going. Vic continues to pay for the hosting and a few others help out with monitoring the code of conduct, something you should know about since it seems to apply to you almost exclusively. Thanks to Vic JT.ca gets thousands of reads and presents good opinions, news, events, all with a local angle.The site is read by people not in the immediate area and everybody knows that all the politicians read it too. A big success. And as usual when there was actual work involved you vanished like Tony Ruprecht.
As everybody knows Jack, when the cameras go away, you go away.
Scott D., Sorry I didn't run it by you. I know you like to think you are the Grand Puba of JT.
It wasn't my idea Calling it the Raccoon Rally. Don't matter, I don't need to explain things to you. I have received ton's my emails from from strangers who are Tax paying Citizens of this city who are either on low income, seniors and single family earners who have damages to their property can't afford the extra expense. These home owners who have a geniune complaint and concerns about damage done to their property by raccoons.
FYI, This wasn't my idea. I got a call from some residents on Ranking asking for help, to help bring some attention to this incident with Mr Nguyen, many were mad about the arrest some felt it was an over kill. Mnay know the family and were suprised he got arrested been a family man and the only bread earner in the family.
Like me many on rankin or across the city don't support crueity to animals and I made that clear to the media and others who I spoke to, but this is a larger problem then everyone thinks like the emails I received explained. I don't believe My Nguyen is an isolated incident, nor will this be the last assult on raccoons. Home owners are frustrated and deserve the support or at least to be listen too. I hope I cleared a few things for you
I am also a home owner in the area and would never dream of beating a raccoon to death because they are damaging my property. There are measures one can take to try and deal appropriately with the situation. If you claim you are spending thousands of dollars to repair your house why don't you spend much less and have a professional come in and help you trap and relocate the offending animals.
Yeah the city should fix all our problems but I bet the biggest complainers don't want to pay more taxes do they? I am overrun with ants that are moving my dirt around - HELP, the government needs to do something!