Dufferin Grove Park is awesome
Rated this place:
Mad love goes out to Dufferin Grove Park in Bunch’s home city of Toronto as one of the best urban community centres going. Thanks to the work of an awesome bunch of community volunteers, and an organization that isn’t (there are no formal meetings, no committee structure, no charitable status) called Friends of Dufferin Grove Park, the park’s rink house is always abuzz with activity.Friends of Dufferin Grove Park was formed in the early 90s, when a proposed expansion of a nearby mall caused concern for local residents. As a settlement, the mall corporation offered the park $20,000 to spend on new playground equipment. The official parks department meeting was poorly attended but an informal telephone survey found that grown ups wanted more places to sit and access to fresh, healthy food and drink. Kids wanted basketball courts and an adventure playground. Everyone wanted a prettier, more welcoming park.Through 93 and 94, an adventure playground was created, complete with lumber and tools donated by neighbours, community cooking fires were established and a children’s garden was begun. Summer drop in programs were created, allowing kids to do art in the park. In 1995, Dufferin Grove’s first of two outdoor woodburning ovens was built.Today, Dufferin Grove is a community hub. Volunteers can be found tending to several gardens (In addition to the children’s garden there’s a butterfly garden and a kitchen garden.) The park plays host to local theatre troupes, art festivals, and performances. Local schools use the rink and city activists hold their meetings around the cook ovens or in the rink house. Thursdays there’s a farmers market.Community has always organized best over food, and Dufferin Grove Park’s community is no different. Each Friday, many dozens of families flock to the park to share a meal with their neighbours and to talk, play and be a part of a bigger whole.On Sundays, the bake ovens are thrown open to kids and grown-ups alike to make pizzas. Next to the playground and wading pool, The Cob Courtyard, an outdoor adobe structure complete with second wood stove, provides refreshments to parents and kids, so they have more energy to keep on playing outdoors.The neighbourhood reports that the sense of community fostered at the park seems to really make a difference. Youth crime in the area has gone down noticeably since the park’s revitalization. Kids who grow up hanging out in the park feel a sense of connection to their community, they eat together, play together, and, possibly more importantly, plan together.
HALLOWEEN EXPERIENCE
It begins with a fantastical masked community parade though the Dufferin/Bloor/College Street neighbourhood. The parade leads to Dufferin Grove Park where there is a massive spectacle, a bonfire and dancing (to fiddle music with costumed ghosts). This event is too crazy and beautiful to describe. Go!
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