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**Update** Park People Park Talk – Thursday 6 p.m.

This meeting has now been moved to Cozy Cafe on the southwest corner of Danforth and Woodbine.  6 p.m. Everyone welcome.

Park People is a group of people (naturally) interested in, and working to improve and advocate on behalf of parks in Toronto. DECA is hosting the next Park Talk, which is open to people across the city.

The next six months will be the most critical time facing our parks since amalgamation and Park People is looking to develop a strategy for defending and improving our parks.The discussion will focus on how we can respond to  major changes facing our parks in the next six months:

  • potential budget cuts
  • a new city parks plan, and
  • new contract discussions for unionized city park staff.

We will be meeting on the hill in the park. In case of foul weather, we will meet instead just around the corner at the Cozy Café, 2075 Danforth. Everyone is invited.

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Applemania

Applemania: [ap-uhl mey-nee-uh]

Enthusiasm, often of an extreme and transient nature for the usually round, red or yellow, edible fruit of a small tree.

Thursday is Applemania day at the East Lynn Farmers Market.  What does that mean for you?It means the lovely and talented, Melanie, of Melanie’s Bistro, will be serving up apple treats.  And it means Rob of Alistair Ant will be performing at 4:30 p.m.  Rob will perform for about a half an hour along with his puppet, Sluggo. 
This week’s Market Craft

What better way to celebrate back to school than by cutting apart books?! This week’s crafts are Bookish Star Ornaments. The ornaments can be displayed either as a star or as a

closed book -simply open to reveal the star shape. All the materials will be pre cut, but there is some gluing, and drying patience, involved. Crafts at the market will now start at 4:30 for the remainder of the season. So now you don’t have to cut school to play.

Also, face painting starts at 4:30 p.m.

DECA Elects

DECA is an apolitical organization. In past, we have organized candidates debates for both municipal and provincial election campaigns. This time around, we’ve invited local candidates to visit the East Lynn Farmers’ Market on Thursday, September 22nd. This is an opportunity for you to meet your local candidates and put them on the hot seat with your questions or simply get to know them a little bit. Watch this space to see who will be there and when.

Park People

DECA will be co-hosting a free public event with Park People: Toronto Alliance For Better Parks on Thursday, September 29th at 6 p.m. in East Lynn Park. This will be an opportunity for anyone who has an interest in parks to learn about what DECA is doing about parks in our neighbourhood and what we can learn from other communities.

Park People is a relatively new organization dedicated to improving Toronto’s parks. It advocates for better parks for all communities by facilitating neighbourhood engagement in their parks, building a network of local community park groups, acting as a watchdog on issues affecting parks and highlighting the importance of good parks to the social, health, environmental and economic well being of all residents of Toronto.

Stay tuned for more on this event in the coming weeks.

Last but not least, check out the cool neighbourhood and street parties that people have written about on the blog comment section!  If you have a street party to tell us about, post it on the blog or send it to me and I’ll share.

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Park People and Our New Website!

Drum rolll…….we have a beautiful, wonderful, practical, user-friendly, fabulous new website!  Hooray!  You can see it in all it’s glory here at www.danfortheast.ca.  Thank you very very much to Jay Lilley and Angela Matich for all of their hard work.  At the new and improved website you can access this blog, become a DECA member (yes – you get all this community spirit, information and volunteer labour for a mere $10/year), read our charter, by-laws and executive terms of reference, read meeting minutes and find information about everything that we do and how you might want to get involved.

DECA’s Parks Team

As you may remember, DECA has formed a new sub committee – the Parks group.  Its first task has been to do an inventory of the recreation facilities in our community.  We hope this will be useful for two reasons: first as a resource to our members and second to determine what facilities we have, what shape they’re in and if we should be doing something to improve them.  The Parks team is in the midst of this inventory and we’ll let you know when it’s available to take a look on our website.

Park People

Speaking of parks, DECA exec member, Catherine Porter went to a city-wide meeting of a new group called Park People: Toronto Alliance For Better Parks the other week and she sent along the dispatch below.  We are linking with the Park People because let’s face it -we’re Park People too.  While there she met Helen.  Helen lives in our neighbourhood and, with her sister, writes a gardening blog called Toronto Gardens.  Currently they have a post about the closing of Reeves Nursery on the Danforth, boo.

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Park People is a new lobby group for parks in the city, run by Dave Harvey, a former advisor on the environment to Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The group is meant to both lobby for parks and act as a resource to individual community park groups.  They want to help connect, inspire and navigate the bureaucracy – both inside the city government and out. Harvey is big on public-private partnerships, following the model of Tupper Thomas, a bigwig from Brooklyn who masterminded the turn around of a big park there called Prospect Point.

Prospect Point is the size of High Park, with a forest and man-made lake, carousel and sports fields. She secured funding from the private sector to redevelop parts of the park and pay for operating costs; and she oversees 6,000 volunteers who help do everything from tree maintenance to children’s education.

The basic plan for Park People, at least for now is:

* Provide a central resource for parks groups. Compile a master list of “Friends of” groups, and things they are doing, their expertise.

* Advertise park events through a Facebook page

* Host park talks, starting early this June, that tour different parks in the city and bring local expertise there to talk about how they achieved their goals. (ie. Jutta Mason can tell groups how to get a bake oven up and running; Greenwood Park can talk about community camp fires, etc.) The local group hosts the event and showcases its park to other groups who come to hear the speaker.