February 12, 2026: a one-year anniversary and a state-of=the-park report (Part One)

Dufferin Grove park is one of the down-in-the-weeds examples of how wobbly Toronto's municipal bureaucracy -- in this case, Parks and Recreation -- is. Last winter's banning drama (which began on February 12, 2025) and the encampment stand-offs over the past few years highlight the confusion at City Hall.

When, ultimately, the tents were cleared, there were comments on Erella’s listserv that “finally we have our park back.”

Yes and no.

A thumbnail history: The intricate ecology of the net of friendships and sociability that thrived at Dufferin Grove for about twenty years is gone. The reason goes back much longer than last year, to a very unpopular restructuring of the whole Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division in 2003/2004. Then in 2011, city management declared that pretty well everything that the lively rec staff were doing at Dufferin Grove, in close combination with neighbours, was a serious “conflict of interest.” Managers began working on dismantling that culture. Because of community resistance, their project was slow going. Ultimately, it wasn't until three years of covid restrictions on public space, and a difficult rink renovation, that the former park culture disappeared completely.

It was a bit of a miracle that it was able to take place at all. I’ve been writing, stringing together some of the experiences of those years, with the help of twenty years of newsletters. It’s a story for later.

Meantime, the State of the Park update:

MAJOR CAPITAL PROJECTS

1. The rink reno.

In January 2025, Elizabeth Antczac and I made a poster about the reno problems still needing fixes. The poster was ripped down by rink guard staff six times, without their supervisor being able (or trying very hard) to stop them.

These are some of the unresolved problems since that poster was made, over a year ago.

west rink door, broken since November 2025

Doors: I visited the building twice last week. All door-opening mechanisms were broken. The west facing door has danger tape blocking it, which staff say has been there since November, when one of the door hinges came loose.
Washrooms: Both days when I was there, the unisex extra-large wheelchair washroom was being used as an ideal kind of smoking club room by a group of 8 youth. When staff ask them to leave the washroom, they move into the entry foyer instead. The design of this washroom foyer part of the rink is ideal for this kind of activity.
Lighting: The building lighting is still not adjustable by staff, so it is either very bright or, after 8 pm, half off.
Storage: Many of the storage cupboards are out of reach except by a ladder, and there is no ladder.
Seating: the modular benches are suitable for a locker-room vibe. Nothing is suggestive of a place for visiting among neighbours, or having lunch together.
Kitchen: the shades are usually all pulled down, so there are no interesting sights of food preparation. Plus the service window has no room for displaying food. A restaurant that’s set up that way would fail fast.

No Post-reno user site meeting: There has never been a post-reno-meeting, at and around the rink building, when rink building visitors or front-line rec staff can explain to the architects (DTAH), what’s working and what doesn’t. That means the designers can’t learn from people’s experience, nor can they devise fixes (e.g. the lighting, the food counter, the doors). We asked for such a real-world assessment but were told that the city doesn’t allow for those.

2. The playground reno:

From Councillor Bravo's public notice:

Budget: $550,000.
Contract: Ferdom Construction.
Start of construction: Spring 2026.

There was a community survey in summer 2024.
From the city's community engagement manager:

In the city's survey, the elements of the Dufferin Grove playground that seemed to get the most stars were the shade trees and the sandpit play area. However, the sandpit/adventure playground area is explicitly not considered part of the playground.

the sandpit adventure playground: making rivers, bridges, feats of engineering

From the city's Dufferin Grove Park web page:

The existing playground is being improved, with one play structure being replaced and some of the existing play features and equipment being restored. The playground is being redesigned using community feedback and is proposed to include:

the new playground replacement budget is $550,000

-- new playground equipment (replacing the large play structure, and very similar to it)

-- restoring some of the existing play equipment

-- engineered wood fibre surfacing

-- an accessible pathway and ramp to the playground area

-- a new fence around the playground

-- expanding the playground to add a new swing set

Playground budgets history:

During the big playground-safety purge of 2000-2001, replacement “stairs-and-hallways” playgrounds being installed in many playgrounds cost $15,000- to $18,000.
Dufferin Grove ducked that bullet and kept most of its 1983 playground, although the jiggly bridge, the fireman’s pole, and a circular slide were removed. Several small bouncy elements were added.
In 2009 the playground was to be replaced at a cost of about $70,000. The City Councillor of that time, Adam Giambrone, conducted a community site meeting and concluded that the proposed changes were not wanted by the neighbourhood, so they didn't happen.
In 2010 the city's 24 "Stimulus project" playgrounds had a budget of $100,000 each (to stimulate the economy through new capital projects), one-third from each level of government. Dufferin Grove was still on the general replacement list but kept its existing playground then too.

The $550,000 budget in 2026 (not uncommon citywide) takes the price up quite a bit more.

3. The Art Space at the Dufferin Grove Field House.

The Clay and Paper Theatre Company has been doing puppetry theatre and workshops in Dufferin Grove Park (and many other public spaces) for over 30 years. For over ten years, there have been suggestions/promises/plans/new plans from various levels of government to give the company a home in the park, larger than the little washroom field house they have been using to make their puppets. This has still not materialized.

MINOR CAPITAL PROJECTS

1. The cob kitchen. It's still unrepaired, two years after thieves stripped out all the copper plumbing one night. Two recent Masters of Architecture and Landscape Architecture graduates, Elizabeth Antczak and Izzy Mink, who live near the park, wrote a detailed proposal about what could be done to repair the cob kitchen. They had met with Parks staff and told them of their interest. But there was never an acknowledgement by staff that they had received the report. A follow-up query, about whether the copper pipe could be replaced with PEX pipe, also got no response.

Dec.8, 2023: after 26 years, the fire finally cracked the dome

2. The bake oven: On Dec.8, 2023, the roof of the bigger bake oven caught fire. After 26 years of constant use, this was a sign that it was time to rebuild the working parts -- the hearth and the dome and the housing around it -- to make it available for another 26 years. Instead, the city's insurance company was engaged to do a mostly cosmetic repair, and very quickly it became obvious that this had not fixed the problem. There were several meetings that included actual oven users. In July 2024 we heard that oven replacement plans were indeed being considered by Capital Projects Design & Delivery - but with no timeline in sight. Then on Feb.12 2026, there was a site meeting with city staff, prompted by a report from former Dufferin Grove staff baker Heidrun Gabel-Koepff. She gave some history of the 2023 repairs and suggestions for how the oven might be brought back. It appears that staff now intend to hire a landscape architect to write a report about the situation.

PROGRAMS:

1. City-run Food programs

On January 29, Ward Nine city councillor Alejandra Bravo held a meeting about the park. Staff had informed her that

A little history of former food programs is here.
I have made a diary “snapshot” page for the current food programming food programs notes| here.

Friday Night suppers: weekly attendance was seldom more than twenty customers. (The Friday potluck dinner also carried on, as a kind of hybrid.) The Friday meals are heavily subsidized by the city -- $7 a meal doesn’t even cover the food costs, not to mention the ample staffing. This subsidy is a very unusual approach outside of food banks.
Public pizza days had 3 to 5 staff and continued to be run haphazardly, often starting late and ending early, with much less public participation than formerly.
Registered day camp pizza days were the main pizza-making focus.
The summer playground snack bar didn’t work, not least because the cob kitchen can’t be used (the copper plumbing was stripped out by thieves and never fixed).
The winter snack bar, often staffed by three people, has the limitations described above, imposed by the reno design.

the current "cob café" (photo from July 8)

the cob café as it was for ten years

2. City-run non-food programs:

A. Wintertime skate loans: Pre-2020, this program was a cheap $2 skate rental program that paid for itself and hugely expanded the number of people who came to skate. Since the rink re-opened, the skate loans are free and staff are not allowed to take I.D., only names and phone numbers as given by the borrower (and therefore not traceable). That means that skates are sometimes not returned, without consequence. When certain sizes become scarce, they are periodically replaced with orders of new skates. This is not a financially viable program over the long term.

B. The Spring-Summer-Fall adventure playground sandpit: Pre-2011, this popular program formerly had staff support to provide shovels, buckets, and “loose parts” (locally scavenged building materials), and to attend to the activities there. The city does not regard this as an official play area (it’s not mentioned in their park information page). Now shovels are provided but nothing else, and there’s no rec staff involvement otherwise, including removing broken plastic or paying any other attention.

C. The summertime wading pool: Pre-2011, the wading pool was part of a complete approach to children’s play, with wading pool staff taking turns at the playground, the cob kitchen snack bar, the children’s garden, the parent-child and also the school pizza days, and basically everything else. This meant the staff had a variety of activities in their day.
After the city's "harmonization" of the Dufferin Grove wading pool with all the other city wading pools, wading pool attendants now sit at the wading pool for their entire shift. This means they spend a lot of time dozing or on their phones and have little or no connection even to other rec staff.

Even requests for staff to keep a lookout over the waterplay in the sandpit, right beside the wading pool, has met with absolute refusal all the way down the line – from aquatics management right down to the wading pool watchers. “It’s not part of their/my job” is the watchword. (More about this in the staffing section, Blog part 2.)

See also: my one-year-anniversary/State of the Park Blog, Part two