Neighbourhood Toy Store Day and other local shopping news!

This weekend!

Now, we all know that Silly Goose Kids is an amazing store. Recently, this was verified by Now Magazine readers who named them one of the best Toy Stores in the city! (Many, many of our beloved locals earned nods in the city-wide “Reader’s Choice Best of Toronto” – click here for all of the winners)

The fact that this awesome little store manages to undertake many community events only makes us love them more. Join Silly Goose Kids this Saturday, November 18 for Neighbourhood Toy Store Day where they will be offering 15% off all day along with exciting events, giveaways and activities including a visit from the Gruffalo himself!! (So excited…er, I mean, my kids will be so excited…).

See you there at 2054 Danforth, just west of Woodbine from 9:30am-6:00pm.

 


Another shopping event is happening at the Nooks!

Shop for all of your holiday gifts at the EVERYTHING IS UNDER $50 POP-UP Market on November 18th from 11am-6pm. This is the perfect pop-up to shop for everyone on your list! Featuring a curated selection of hand-made, local and artisanal good (again, ALL UNDER $50! You can’t go wrong!). 2005 Danforth Avenue

Check out their Facebook event for more info.


Add A Little Purr To Your Life: Wag on the Danforth Cat Adopt-A-Thon this Saturday!

Adopt! Adopt! Adopt! Please Toronto Cat Rescue on Saturday, November 18th from 10am – 4pm for an adopt-a-thon with Wag on Danforth! Kittens and cats will be waiting for you in-store to adopt them and bring them home.

*** Special Adoption Fees at the event only! Our adoption fee at the event only is $100 (vs. the standard $175 adoption fee) for cats and kittens over 8 months of age, and $175 for kittens under 8 months of age – payable by cash only. Our fee includes: spay or neuter, vaccination (receive a rabies vaccination, if age appropriate) and includes 6 weeks of free pet insurance. For City of Toronto residents, the adoption fee includes a mandatory City of Toronto cat license that is valid for one year.

Wag is a family-run shop located in the East end of Toronto at Danforth Ave. & Woodbine Ave., Wag is easily accessible via car with street parking or TTC (Woodbine station). 1918 Danforth Ave / (647) 349-8263


Next weekend!

The Danforth Mosaic BIA is hosting an all-day local shopping celebration next Saturday, November 25 concurring with DECA’s 6th Annual Festival of Lights from 5-6pm. Here’s what they have to say about the event:

Make the Holidays special by shopping, eating and playing on Danforth East this Holiday Season!

Join the Businesses of The Danny BIA on November 25, 2017, for Shop Local Saturday – a great opportunity to explore and discover the great businesses that are in this neighbourhood that have everything you need to make your holidays special!

You’ll Love What You Find Here! There will be buskers moving through the neighbourhood between Jones & Westlake from 2pm-5pm to entertain you while you explore our local businesses.

Here’s the Facebook event for more info


One more thing…

Are you coming to our Annual General Meeting & Party on Monday? Hope you can make it, but if not, please do sign up to be a member of DECA. It takes 5 minutes, costs $10/household (per year) and you will feel great about supporting our 100% volunteer run community association. Here’s the link!

Last Market of 2017! See you there!

Neighbours, the time has come for the very last East Lynn Farmers’ Market of this season.

Today, we’ll have facepainting, friendly DECA volunteers at the DECA Table and reps from the City seeking input about the Danforth Ave Planning Study. Please make sure to come and support the farmers, even if you are unable to stay (or if it’s raining).

Come by and tell your favourite vendor how much you appreciate them!

As the market season comes to a close, we have to say thank you to all of our farmers and vendors who make the whole market possible, along with the folks at Farmers’ Markets Ontario and especially Yuri, our market manager. There are so many volunteers who we cannot thank personally, but huge shout out to the volunteers who staff the DECA table (who also help with set-up and clean-up and many other tasks!), the facepainters, the organizers, the bloggers, and the kind souls who cooked for the farmers this year – many of whom answered our desperate, mid-summer plea when we had a daunting number of empty slots. Our market is special because of all the love that goes into it, and in turn, all the love that comes out of it.

Special thanks to Alison McMurray and Rebecca Green, who are there week after week and who can be seen around 3pm and 7pm most Thursdays schlepping things up and down the hill from and to the shed (and answering questions like “Why is there no corn in June?” with a smile on their faces) and to Shelley Darling who books the community table, the bloggers and generally keeps track of who is where week after week.

See you today from 3-7 at East Lynn Park!!

  • Note: If you can’t make it today or would rather provide feedback to the City online, a feedback form is now live on the study’s website (www.toronto.ca/danforthstudy), with a deadline of October 23, 2017. All responses received will form part of the consultation related to the material originally presented to the community on September 14, 2017

 

 

Summer continues this weekend: Arts fair, concert, new store and more!

Want to make the most of this unexpected summery weather? Here are some suggestions!

Danforth East Arts Fair, East Lynn Park, Sat & Sun, 10am-5pm

I know you know but here’s the poster again anyway because honestly, our 100% volunteer-run, juried (meaning the vendors were selected as the cream of the crop among many applicants) arts fair is such an amazing event. You must go.

While you’re there, don’t forget to post some pics to social media using #DECAF17


Rikki Nicks Concert, Stephenson Park, Sat 7-9:30pm

How fun is this? Awesome Fleetwood Mac cover band, plus food, wine and beer available for purchase from Sauce, Hooked and Tuana!?!

Stephenson Park is by Main and Danforth, more or less behind Sobey’s. Kudos to Councillor McMahon and Friends of Stephenson Park for organizing.

If you live in the area and want to help our with Friends of Stephenson Park, email us and we will put you in touch or contact them via their Facebook page. They really need volunteers, especially for the winter ice rink effort.


August Kinn Grand Opening, Sat 10am-6pm, 1374 Danforth

A lovely new store for baby things has opened between Coxwell & Greenwood. Visit them today for their grand opening event! They will have door prizes and other fun stuff so check it out.


Other DECA Events

Okay fine, we *just* posted yesterday about our scavenger hunt and the impressive prizes available, plus our two fun #DECAde birthday parties happening on Thursday (Sept 21) and on Saturday (Sept 23) so here’s a link to that post in case you missed it.

Do you love what DECA does? Support us by buying a $10/household membership. Click here! We are also looking for volunteers for events, our Board and for whatever your great idea is!


Even more events later this week!

WAX + WATER 

A collection of recent encaustic and acrylic artworks by Victoria Wallace and Deanna Hutton. September 22-27, 2017 at STUDIO by the Nooks – 1912 Danforth Ave, 1 1/2 blocks west of Woodbine

OPENING NIGHT PARTY – Friday, September 22 from 6-9pm.

For those that can’t make it to the Opening, the Gallery will be open the following days/times.
Friday, Sept 22.……….6pm-9pm – Opening Night Party
Saturday, Sept 23.…..11am-7pm – encaustic demonstrations
Sunday, Sept 24.…….11am-5pm – acrylic demonstrations
Monday, Sept 25.…… 11am-5pm – gallery open
1pm-4pm – *Acrylic Transfer Workshop by Victoria
Tuesday, Sept 26.……11am-7pm – artists painting in the gallery
Wednesday, Sept 27..11am-5pm – artists painting in the gallery

*Acrylic Transfer Workshop – $75 includes all materials – max 8 participants.  To register, please contact Victoria at victoriawallaceartist@gmail.com.

Now Magazine Readers’ Poll

It’s a big deal for our locals to win these “best of” awards so take time to vote and show everyone in this city what #DanforthEast has to offer. Voting closes this Thursday (September 21) at 11pm so do not delay.

To make it easy, our friends at Moberly consolidated all of our local nominees here:

http://www.moberlynaturalfoods.com/2017/07/21/now-best-toronto-find-danforth-east-businesses-nominated/


That’s all for now!

The Market this Week

Thank you to everyone who attended, shopped, ate and enjoyed the activities at the Grand Opening of the market last week!  Every week in June we add more farmers to the mix as their produce becomes available, so be on the lookout for a few new vendors this week.

This week, Toronto Public Library are coming to the market with a 3D printing demonstration. And the Michael Garron Hospital will at the community booth sharing both health information and information on their upcoming (major) construction project.

If you are looking to get involved in the market we have two weekly volunteer gigs that we could use some help with.  The DECA Booth volunteer and cooks.  Check out the links provided to find out more about the roles and to sign up for a date!

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The East Lynn Farmers’ Market runs every Thursday from 3-7:00 p.m. between June 1 – October 19 at East Lynn Park, located on the south side of Danforth Ave, just west of Woodbine Ave. Stay up to date by visiting the East Lynn Market Facebook page or by following us on Twitter.

Meet this year’s scholarship winner

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I met Sal Sabila at the Monarch Park ping pong table this week.

She was sitting on the table. She doe not play ping pong, it turned out. But I brought two paddles, and Sal is always game to try something new.

She’s the winner of this years’s DECA Young Leaders scholarship.

She told me her story, in between trips under the table to collect the ball.

Sal arrived to Canada from Bangladesh six years ago, with her little brother, mom and dad. She didn’t speak any English, but she was clearly a quick learner. Three years later, she enrolled into the brainy International Baccalaureate program at Monarch Park. She’s a math whiz. She got 97 per cent in Grade 10 Principles of Mathematics. She’s going to the University of Toronto next year, to study mathematics and physical sciences. She wants to become a high school math teacher.

The DECA scholarship isn’t for academics though. It’s for community activism.

So Sal told me about the “amazing dream” she had a year ago. It was of a room filled with passionate teenagers, talking about problems and dreaming up ways to tackle them. Big problems: human trafficking, racial inequality, poverty. Seriously.

“People don’t believe me when I say this,” she said. “But it really was a dream.”

So she drafted a poster and put it up around her Regent Park apartment. It said “Youth Council, Regent Park. Come let’s have a passionate talk.” Unsurprisingly, nobody came to that first meeting. But she persisted. In the past year, Youth Gravity (that’s what she called the group) has done some impressive things. They hosted a community potluck with the nearby Native Cultural Centre to mix local residents with their indigenous neighbours. They ran a donation drive for the local women’s shelter, collecting more than 1,000 pieces of clothing. The organized a march on International Women’s Day.

But that’s not all. While she was doing all that in her neighbourhood, she was doing amazing things in ours too, at Monarch Park Collegiate.

She launched the local women’s empowerment club, called 50/50. And she started the mental health club called “Rise Above” because, in the middle of all this activism, she was diagnosed with clinical depression.

 “There’s very strong stigma around anything to do with mental health,” she said. “My community activism was the only thing I’d get out of bed for.”

I could have talked to her all afternoon. But she had to run. She won the Toronto Youth Award for 2016 from the Toronto Police and had a photo appointment at Station 51. As we were packing up our stuff, she asked me if I knew anything about pay equity the wage gap.

“It’s really terrible,” she said, before racing off. “We have to do something about it!”

I think she might just.

Now, the DECA Young Leaders Scholarship is $2000. We’ve committed to raise at least half of that, and Scadding Court Community Centre will kick in the rest.

You can help us do it by finding a partner and signing up for DECA’s second annual Table Tennis for Tuition Tournament, happening in three local parks this June. You will play in one “mini-tournament” at 6 pm on either June 1, 8 or 15. If you win that, you’ll go onto the finals on June 22, at East Lynn Park.

You’ll have fun, meet your neighbours, win some awesome local prizes and help pay for Sal’s books.

So, find yourself a partner and register here.  The entry fee is only $20 for adult players and $10 for teenagers, aged 13-19.

If you want to donate, but don’t want to play ping pong, you can do that too by going here and clicking the “donate to DECA button.”

The world needs more Sal Sabila’s. Let’s help get her on her way, Danforth East!

Danforth East Arts Fair: Looking for Artisans!

The Danforth East Community Association (DECA) is

Looking for Artisans

for this year’s juried outdoor arts and crafts fair

Online applications are due
March 31, 2017

Apply Now!

For further information, visit the Danforth East Arts Fair website.

The Danforth East Arts Fair provides artists with a unique opportunity to showcase and sell their work. Our vibrant community is filled with new families, established homeowners and creative folks who are eager to support local artists.  Our neighbourhood event has drawn coverage and rave reviews from media and blogs.  Don’t miss out!