Our Annual General Meeting & Party is coming up on November 20 from 7-9 pm at Hirut (2050 Danforth). Hope you can join us!
At the party you can:
Meet your neighbours
Enjoy Hirut’s delicious food (on us!)
Find out how to get more involved with DECA
Join DECA or renew your $10/year per household membership
Meet our Board and many of our other amazing volunteers
Vote for next year’s Board if you are a member (this is the AGM part!)
Enjoy the cash bar
If you’ve never come to the Party & AGM before, the short formal part will go from about 8:00-8:30pm and you’ll hear about our annual events and ongoing initiatives, the not-to-be-missed Treasurer’s report, nail-biter Board elections and last but not least, remarks from our outgoing Chair (yours truly). The rest of the time is for chatting with neighbours and hanging out. Not a bad way to spend a Monday evening.
Membership and voting are limited to people who live in our catchment (Main to Lumsden/Mortimer to Monarch Park to the train tracks) but everyone who cares about this neighbourhood can come to this and all of our events.
The Board will be putting forward the following nominees for election to the 2017/18 Board:
Loreen Barbour (Co-Chair)
Gay Stephenson (Co-Chair)
Audrey Kvedaras (Vice Chair)
Anita Schretlen (Treasurer)
Nicole Bergot-Browning (Secretary)
Alison McMurray
Amanda Olson
Melissa Peretti
Jennifer Scott
Rebecca Green
Brad Bradford
Lorraine Chen
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If you are interested in future opportunities on our Board, please ask us about it on Monday or reach out to us by email and we can talk about getting you involved over the coming year.
For this series of blog posts marking our #DECAde, we are looking back on where DECA started, how far we’ve come and where the next 10 years might take us and our neighbourhood. We are including interviews with some of DECA’s founders and other info and tidbits from DECA’s “archives”
2014 DECA Board
Making Change
Parts 1 and 2 of series described what the neighbourhood was like 10 years ago and how a group of people came together to start DECA. This post is about what happened next. As you know, fair reader, the DECA Diaries blog was our only communication tool for many years before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram helped us expand our reach. Lovingly written by DECA’s founding Chair, Natasha Granatstein from 2008-2011 when every post was written on an actual computer (not on an iPhone like this one) and event posters were still actual pieces of paper and not JPEG files so the words that Natasha wrote had to be crafted carefully – and they were.
In the past nine years of the blog (it began as an email newsletter), we have posted 1160 times. Each post takes anywhere from 20ish minutes to a few hours of someone’s spare time, to help get the word out about our community. More than 1200 people subscribe to the blog and many more read it via Facebook and Twitter. The blog is now managed by a small team of volunteer bloggers and a volunteer editor (yours truly). Turns out, the blog is also our unofficial archive.
Here’s a look back courtesy of the blog at some of what we’ve done to change the neighbourhood over the past #DECAde.
Our weekly market posts didn’t start until a few years in, but this post was a sweet reminder of a wonderful night at the market (in its third year by 2009) where people of all ages came to square dance!
November 2009: Our first annual cocktail party (that was secretly also our AGM) at Melanie’s Bistro. No e-version of the poster back then so the blog post is our only proof!
January 2012 – blog post about Australian Marcus Westbury’s innovative “pop-up shop” model to deal with high commercial vacancy
March 7, 2012 – Marcus Westbury was in town so we hosted an event with him!
May 2012 – carrot gets a buddy: the birth of the broccoli costume!
What shows a deeper commitment to improving one’s own community than dressing as vegetables to promote our local farmers’ market during rush hour?!
Veggies promoting our Farmers’ Market
October 2012: First Pop-Up Shops
This was back when it was solely run by a team of DECA volunteers, based on the Renew Newcastle model we learned about earlier that year. Incredible!
June 2013: First #DanforthEast Yard Sale
April 2014: #DanforthEast Dreams event
We asked you what you wanted for our neighbourhood and mapped it and made a video found in this follow-up blog post. (The post also shows our first laneway revitalization effort more than three years ago!)
April 2015: DECA Gems neighbourhood competition
It was a total love-in and so many people learned of new places to shop, eat, play, get their car fixed, hem a skirt, get a haircut, buy flowers and on and on. Search the hashtag #DECAGems on our fb page or blog to look back. Anyone remember who won?
December 2015: First DECA Connects fundraiser – Sleep Out for Syrians
DECA’s social justice group launched with this fundraiser where participants slept outside (in December!) to simulate what Syrian refugees were experiencing for months in camps. The goal was $10k. In the end, we raised $28,500, helping several Syrian families come to Canada.
June 2016: First DECA Pride LGBTQ+ event
We have a thriving LGBTQ+ community in the east end but no groups or events. DECA Pride changed that!
June 2016: First Table Tennis for Tuition
To raise money to support the $2000 DECA Young Leaders Scholarship established in 2016.
This has been an amazing decade-long experiment in being positive and making changes that many people say have transformed our neighbourhood.
Want to join us?
DECA memberships are $10/household to support our community initiatives including our weekly Farmers’ Market, Diversity Scholarship, annual Arts Fair, Pumpkin Parade, Tree Lighting Festival, #DanforthEast Yard Sale, DECA Pride LGBTQ+ group and more! Sign up here.
Earl Haig P.S. is hosting a fabulous Hullabaloo evening this Friday, Nov. 7 at 7:30 pm at the Coxwell Legion. Organizers tell us that there will be terrific silent auction items while guests can mix and mingle with great people from the community, listen to some great live jazz/blues music, and it will all support a great cause – Earl Haig Public School!
Event is organized by the Earl Haig School Council
Tickets: $15 in advance/$20 at the door
DECA Party/Annual General Meeting – Save the Date
On the evening of Monday, November 24, join DECA for our annual party, with a little AGM thrown in to make it official. Watch this space for details to come.
As hinted at previously here, we’ve been working away like Santa’s elves on a new Shop Local project and the results are in! Watch your mailbox today for a holiday coupon booklet including deals and featured items from 50 local businesses.
There are tons of great savings from your favourite stores and maybe even a few shops you haven’t discovered yet. For example, did you know that tucked away beside The Wool Mill (who are offering a coupon for 10% off) we have an amazing courier company, A-Way Courier, that provides meaningful employment for people with direct experience with the mental health system? Try them out with a coupon for a free delivery. Or did you know we have a brand new spot for yoga, Ankh Yoga studio, at the corner of Moberly and Danforth? Try a class for $10 with your coupon booklet.
If you don’t receive your copy in the mail, you can print it off here. Please bring your booklet with you when you do your holiday shopping to redeem all the deals. Only 1 coupon per customer, per store.
HUGE thank yous to volunteers Niamh Hill for managing the project and to graphic designers Heather Corbin and Queenie Best for making the booklet look gorgeous.
Watch This Space: Our Newest Pop-up Shop
All the Pop-up Shops are also featured in the coupon booklet (click here for current shop details), including our newest one, jewelry store Zilberschmuck. Located in Yummy Stuff’s old space at 1938 Danforth, Zilberschmuck will be opening this Friday, November 22 (or possibly earlier). The store carries contemporary, Canadian-made jewelry like the beautiful necklace pictured below.
(By the way, if you’re curious about the name and you’re not fluent in German, “Silberschmuck” means “silver jewellery”. The “S” is pronounced as a “Z” sound, so they’ve spelled phonetically.)
1938 Danforth Ave. Tel: 416-871-5885, Tue-Sat 11-6, Sun 12-5
Tonight: Our AGM!
A reminder that our 5th Annual General Meeting and party is tonight, November 18, from 6:30-9:30! Come by Hirut Restaurant, 2050 Danforth Ave, to mingle, hear about upcoming projects and general volunteer opportunities, join/renew your DECA membership ($10/household) and for members to elect the 2014 DECA Board. Why not bring a friend too? After all, it’s going to be a great party.
Please join us Monday, November 18, 2013 from 6:30-9:30pm at Hirut Restaurant (2050 Danforth Ave), for our cocktail party and annual general meeting. This is your chance to mingle, chat, hear about upcoming projects and general volunteer opportunities, join/renew your DECA membership ($10/household) and for members to elect the 2014 DECA Board. See you there!
Did you go to East Lynn Park on Friday night for the Pumpkin Parade? Whether you did or not, here are some beautiful shots from a blog reader, Christopher Ringland, to give you a sense of how spectacular it was. It is truly amazing to see what some of you are able to create with your pumpkins. (Especially for people like me, who was impressed with myself for doing a round nose instead of a triangle nose this year.)
Many thanks to DECA volunteer and east end blogger Sarah Kiriliuk for organizing this year’s Pumpkin Parade (check out her blog at http://eastendpioneer.ca), and to Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon and her office for sponsoring the event and helping us navigate the City requirements. Also, thanks to the many volunteers who did the heavy lifting at the end of the night to clean up the pumpkins and to the Parks team who came and picked up the bins-o-jack-o-lanterns this morning (in the rain!).
Last but not least, thanks to the many, many, many people who gave up a Friday evening to come to the park with their pumpkins. The place was hopping, and it was a great reminder that a chilly, damp, dark park can come alive just like that when the community comes to together to light it up.
Save the Date!
DECA’s next event will be our Cocktail Party and Annual General Meeting, which will be at Hirut on November 18, 2013 from 6:30-9:30pm. More details to come soon.
