DECA Pride was started by DECA to bring together the east end LGBTQ+ community and create spaces and events where we live. Allies are welcome.
For more information or to join the DECA Pride email list, visit DECA.to/Pride or send us an email.
Join us on Tuesday, June 12 to celebrate queerness, community and pride at a free reading of Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer. 7:30-9:00pm at Red Rocket Coffee, 1364 Danforth.
Hosted by co-editor Jane Farrow, we will hear pieces from Kate Zieman, Cathi Bond, Ed Jackson, and Karen B.K. Chan. You can buy a copy of the book for a special price of $20 (cash only). Facebook event here with more info.
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We are also planning our third annual DECA Pride @ The Market on June 21st from 3-7pm, generously sponsored by Steve’s Quality Meats and Deli (1938 Danforth – across the street from East Lynn Park).
Over the course of the afternoon, we’ll have Pride themed arts and crafts with Silly Goose Kids and Create Art Studio and we’re happy to welcome back the Coe Hill Girls to sing and play from about 5-6pm.
So much fun happening this weekend – plus a few reminders about some DECA events coming up in September! The Danforth East Arts Fair is one week away, but you can cope with your excitement by checking out some of these events happening tomorrow.
Saturday events
Bike Lane Party 10am-noon
Queenie’s Cards Grand Opening 10am-6pm
Nooks Flea, noon-10pm
Other News
Do you want a Danforth East Arts Fair sign? Email us and Nicole will be in touch to arrange it!
#DECAde Celebrations
Our 10th birthday celebrations are happening this month! We’re having a party at the East Lynn Farmers’ Market on September 21st (formal remarks and cake at around 5pm) and a cocktail party at the Shore Leave on Saturday, September 23rd from 7-9pm. We also have our self-led community scavenger hunt underway! All the details are in the post found here.
Well, you’ve read this far so you must want to see the arts fair poster! We still need volunteers so watch this space for the sign-up or send us an email. Sitting at the DECA table is a great way to be right in the middle of the happiest day in the neighbourhood! Spots for set-up and take-down are also available.
So much to tell you about what we are up to – our birthday parties next month, community-wide scavenger hunt, meet & greet next week, Board meeting and volunteer opportunity!
Happy Birthday to Us!
We have officially announced our DECAde celebrations, our 10th birthday, with a few exciting events. We’ll tell you more, but here are the highlights:
celebration at the East Lynn Farmers’ Market at East Lynn Park (1949 Danforth Avenue) from 4-6 pm on September 21st. Formal remarks and a cake-cutting to begin at 5pm.
cocktail soirée at The Shore Leave (1775A Danforth Avenue) on Saturday, September 23rd from 7-9 pm (cash bar)
self-led scavenger hunt from now to September 21st to encourage individuals and families to explore the Danforth East neighbourhood to find the 10 spots, using our clues.
Free scavenger hunt maps & clues will be available at the East Lynn Park Farmers’ Market on Thursdays or download one here. Completed maps can be dropped off at the DECA table at the Farmers’ Market every Thursday from 3-7pm until September 21st. All completed maps will be entered into a draw, with results announced at The Shore Leave cocktail soirée on September 23rd.
Meet & Greet + Board Meeting
Who should come to our meet & greet on Tuesday? You should! It’s from 7-8pm at Gerrard’s Pizza in the basement (1528 Danforth). You should come if you’re new to the neighbourhood, or you’re curious about what exactly DECA does and who we are (spoiler alert: we’re all volunteers with full lives but we just really love our neighbourhood and we are fun!) or because you are interested in joining our Board or volunteeringin some other capacity. Come for a chat, and it’s up to you whether you’d like to stay for the Board meeting!
You are also invited to join us for our Board meeting from 8-9pm. Same location. Do you have an agenda item? Just let us know!
Click here to email us with any questions or to RSVP. We appreciate it if you let us know you are coming so we can reach you if anything changes and so that we can change to a bigger location if needed. Please also tell us about any accommodation needs. (The room is not accessible but we will find one that is if needed)
Volunteer Opportunity: Still need cooks
We are still looking for volunteer cooks to feed the farmers’ at our East Lynn Farmers’ Market. Some spots have filled since we made our plea last week but lots of spots are still available. Make a simple meal for 10-15 and we pay you a $20 honourarium. Past volunteer cooks have really enjoyed this chance to give back to the people who bring us their fresh local food week after week! Click here to sign up and for more information.
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.
It’s time for another Thursday-in-the-life of an East Lynn Park farmer.
Meet Bruce Wier of Black Tractor Farms. Bruce and Gillian Proudfood are quite busy managing an 11 acre property in Warkworth, Ontario growing peas, various salad greens, onions, beets, garlic and more. You can follow along on their farming adventures and bee keeping shenanigans on their website. Bruce spends his Thursdays preparing for the market, including washing lettuce and other salad greens and running to the bank to get change. He tends to spend Mondays sequentially planing so he always has fresh lettuce and salad mix each week. This process includes tilling, raking and seeding. And because he don’t use pesticides (or chemical fertilizers or herbicides), he has to cover his lettuce to protect it from flea beetles. Wednesdays are reserved for harvesting, meaning that spicy salad mix on your plate was just picked yesterday. Be sure to stop by the Black Tractor Farm tent and grab some greens for your dinner plate!
For the little ones:
This week the market hosts Anne Massicotte. Anne is an experienced music teacher and performer offering private recorder lessons from her home to students of any age or level. Discover the joy of playing the whole family of instruments! Come see and hear them at the market this week.
Anne Massicotte, recorder teacher
The East Lynn Farmers’ Market runs every Thursday from 3-7:00 p.m. between June 4 – October 15 at East Lynn Park, located on the south side of Danforth Ave, just west of Woodbine Ave. Stay up to date by visiting theEast Lynn Market Facebookpage or by following us on Twitter.
Did you know that the East Lynn Park Farmers’ Market is a certified local market – meaning everything that is sold at the market is actually made by the farmers who are selling to you? DECA partners with Farmers’ Markets Ontario to bring the farmers to our community each week so we can buy the real deal! Hope you’ve been enjoying the fruits of their labour so far this season and continue to support them as we head into this prime harvest season!
The photo contest is still on! Send your best picture that captures the essence of the market to events(at)danfortheastcommunityassociation.com. We’ll repost all the submissions in a few weeks and ask for your help to vote for a winner!
Songs, Stories and Circle Time with Silly Goose Kids
Our pals from Silly Goose Kids will be at the market at 4:30 pm. Talented mother-daughter duo Erika and Sally will run a storytelling session for the wee ones to enjoy! Plus songs and circle time. Check out the poster below for all the details.
Bike Tune-Ups with 32 Spokes
Members of 32 Spokes will be available at the market week for bicycle maintenance, advice, route planning, bike advocacy discussions and general bike-centric chats! They’ll have spare parts and some new tools to play with, along with our friends from Cycle Solutions who will be helping with more technical repairs free of charge.
Fall is the perfect season for bike riding, when the temperatures are not too sweltering nor too cold, so pop along and say hello and they’ll help you keep your ride running smoothly as long into the year as possible!
The East Lynn Farmers’ Market runs every Thursday from 3-7 p.m. between June 6 – October 17 at East Lynn Park, located on the south side of Danforth Ave, just west of Woodbine Ave. Stay up to date by visiting the newEast Lynn Market Facebookpage.
