Centre For Local Research into Public Space (CELOS)
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You are on the [DG Rink House Picnics Jan 2025] page of folder [Research Library ]
For the cover page of this folder go to the Dufferin Rink picnics, January - February 2025
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From Jutta: When the snack bar used to run 7 days a week during skating season, it was easy to set up a time to meet a friend for lunch for a bowl of soup or coffee and a cookie, and a skate before or after. Since that's not happening at this point, I'm trying a different way. I've been sending the following question to people I know or want to get to know: Can I invite you to a little picnic at the rink building?
The menu, based on the former basic snack bar menu, is a cup of vegan or vegetarian soup and/or a mini-pizza, and for dessert chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies and/or an apple. And tea, coffee, or hot chocolate. If there's a kid in the group, maybe a juice box.
It's a little experiment. I'm bringing the food in a little tupperware from home, warming up the soup and the mini pizzas in the new public microwave at the rink. It's a bit like the olden days, when there was a rinkhouse snack bar, open all day everyday.
Simple food and good conversation. And it's also been a chance hang out sometimes, to see if I'm right to say: this renovated building can no longer be called a "clubhouse."
I was wrong. After about a month of "picnic" visits, I can see that it is most definitely a clubhouse.....
....but for city staff.
They socialize with each other a great deal, going between three offices plus the sealed-off kitchen. But they are almost never in the main room, talking to the skaters.
the new snack bar: it's still closed most of the time
minipizza and/or soup, park bread, cookie and/or apple, and a hot drink
Jan.7, 2025
mini-pizzas and hot chocolate
Kate Cayley and her son Danny and Mayssan Shuja Uddin and her daughters Hana Mia and Liana came for an after-school skate and snacks. The staff were demonstrating how to turn on the microwave, but that didn't go well. The microwave made some loud noises and flashed on and off and then started to smoke. So the staff unplugged it and took it out to the trash. That meant no heating up of the mini-pizzas, but the kids ate them all anyway. And drank all the hot chocolate.
Three rec staff, sitting and chatting in the skate room. One on the ice. One in the CRP office, door closed. No staff in the main room.
the microwave blew up
Jan.8 2025
Mary Sylwester making banana muffins, 2009
David, Jutta, and butternut squash soup
Picnic guests were David Anderson and Tamara Romanchuck (Clay and Paper Theatre) on Wednesday, who brought muffins like the ones Mary Sylwester used to bake for the snack bar.
Three rec staff, sitting in the skate room. One in the PT staff room, door closed. One in the CRP office, door closed. No staff in the main room.
Jan.9, 2025
On Thursday Elizabeth Antczak and Rebecca Ott, both of whom are architecture grads from U of Waterloo came to talk about the building reno.
One staff sitting in the skate room. Three staff including the CRP, out in the hallway, trying to deal with toilet overflow.
Jan.10, 2025
And on Friday, Ladan Bebin came to talk about the kitchen and what could be done there. Ladan and her husband Blake were the winners of the third CELOS "Public Space Award" in 2022.
Two staff sitting and talking in the skate room. One in the PT staff room, door closed. One in the CRP office, door closed. No rec staff in the main room. Two security guards sitting near the fireplace, on their phones.
Jan.14, 2025
Isabel's first park breakfast cooking fire, 1995
Jutta, Isabel and Federico at the rink building picnic, Jan.14, 2025
Isabel Perez and her son Federico Perez came for the picnic. Isabel was the first person who cooked for the public at the park, making breakfast over the fire near the field house in 1995. That cooking fire was followed by many more later that year.
You can see the donut-making in this film, called "The Big Backyard."
Today we talked about the missing snack bar, and Isabel and Federico got a look around the kitchen.
Three rec were staff sitting in the skate room. One in the CRP office, door closed. Two security guards going in and out of the kitchen. No staff talking to skaters.
Jan.15, 2025
Avienna Esguerra (Ripple Collective) and Carolyn Oei (park friend) came for a picnic lunch and to talk about the encampments. The new microwave was set up, so it was easy to reheat the mini-pizzas and also a corn-tortilla version.
Three staff sitting in the skate room. One in the PT staff room, and then over to the skate room. One in the CRP office, door closed. Security guards in and out of the main room. No rec staff talking to skaters, but one rec staff reluctant to supply me with a wet paper towel to clean off our table.
Jan.16, email to Michelle Siriani (rec supervisor) and Adam Tyzler (Community Recreation programmer)
Hi Michelle and Adam,
As you've seen, I've found a new way to enjoy the rink even though I don't skate -- by inviting people I want to talk to face to face to meet me at the rink building, and bringing the same kind of simple food we used to have at the former snack bar.
I'm hoping the two of you could join me for the picnic lunch or afternoon snack time next Friday, to talk about the snack bar as it's restarted now. I'd love to find out more about the materials: ready-mixed cookie dough, popcorn kernels popped in the kitchen, coffee and tea and hot chocolate, paper cups and bags -- all sourced from Costco as the least expensive source? And how you think it's going. I'm happy to share my hands-on experience from former decades, if you have things you want to ask me.
Could you make the time for Jan.24, or if not then, could you suggest another time?
[Note: Michelle responded Feb.7: Thanks for sharing....I’m open to meeting on Tuesday if that works for you. No need to prepare anything, but lets say 11am?] I.e. no picnic
Jan.19, 2025
Carolyn Oei came again, this time for tea, cookies, and grapes. The rink had many people in it, including many staff in the kitchen and the skate room. The skate sharpener was broken, and a large bag of skates had been brought over from Wallace Rink, so it added to the jumble in the skate room.
Sundays there is family skating from noon to 4 pm, with both sides of the rink open for pleasure-skating only. The snack bar hours are from 4 until 8, though, so many families had already left, and there wasn't a lot of business. However, the staff and security guards inside the kitchen seemed to be having a good time, socializing and eating. No staff in the main room. There were additional staff from Wallace rink, lugging a big bag of skates for sharpening and then eating lunch in the PT staff room, door closed. The actual snack bar staff had trouble with their point-of-sale device, so they half-closed the snack bar gates for a while until the problem was fixed. Then it was working again, but only if it was held in a certain position.
Jan.21, 2025
card table from home
Colin Prince and Judith Noldin (both long-time participants in the Friday night potluck) came for the picnic. It was a cold day and there was almost no one at the rink. There were no tables up, and besides, a smaller table seemed more appropriate for three people than the usual long ones. There used to be more card tables, but they disappeared or were damaged over last year. Nicole Jacobs, the Thursday farmers' market manager, asked the rec supervisor to restock some smaller tables, since the market is already so crowded, more so with the big tables. But supervisor Michelle Siriani, wrote back "I'll be looking into the 2025 budget and seeing what may be able to be purchased, once it's been approved."
So I brought a card table from home. Not hard, with a little car and a "disabled" sign, allowing good parking access.
The table was a good idea, but I'm wondering if the "basic snack menu" needs a bit better explanation when I invite people. It really is very simple food. A few times now my guests have looked puzzled -- mini pizzas? Eyebrows are not exactly raised -- but the eagerness I get (from people who used to treasure that plain menu) isn't there, for those of my guests who were never sweaty skaters coming off an hour of shinny hockey, hungry as bears. For the young skaters, mini-pizzas made on cheap English muffins with pizza sauce and only cheese as the topping was like ambrosia. And since they only cost 75 cents, you could get another, and another.
Maybe I need to really warn people that this is not a "special" food event.
Jan.27, 2025
a rare moment of open-ness to the park
Jane Price came for a picnic. Jane is the president of the CELOS board. She hasn't had much time to be at the new building yet, and so she was walking around looking at the various changes. She found that the serving window to the kitchen was unlocked, so she slid open the wooden shutters and let the light in. Miraculously, and for the first time that I can remember since the building opened, one of the windows facing the park had its shade partway up. Suddenly it was possible to see the trees outside. During the public meetings the design drawings showed big windows everywhere, looking south at the long expanse of grass and trees. But that's not how it turned out.
As we were eating our soup and mini-pizzas, a rec staffer went into the kitchen and closed and locked the shutters again. Secure at last (!) Various staff went in and out of the kitchen the whole time we were sitting and talking in the main room, apparently to confer with the supervisor of the One Community Solutions security guards. So the kitchen has become yet another office space, but off limits to any non-staff.
Feb.2, 2025
the reno display
Sami Safarian came for a picnic. He's one of the "park kids" from before the changes came, before the lockdowns, even before the elimination of the staff's system of collaboration. The park kids are the ones who say they basically grew up in the park. He had written to me: "Just seeing the email about a celebration for the new rink house facility. I would be interested in catching up and chatting about the new space with you. I feel a lot of charm, tradition and accessibility has been lost in the new rink house... It doesn't feel like something that calls for celebration. Maybe this is a post Covid thing and not in relation to the new building, but none the less I'd be interested to chat!"
Before we sat down to eat, I wanted to show him the "remaining reno issues" display that I had put up on the wall on Friday. But when we got there it was gone. No point asking who removed it, though.
Three staff going in and out of the skate room and back and forth to the rink. Skate lending happening but no sign of any rec staff helping with fitting the skates.
a hallway for changing skates
I had brought another set of pictures, and so we put them up where the other one had been. The we started talking. Sami said that the rink building was just a change room now, not a place where you could hang out. The staff seemed to have nothing to do a lot of the time. The loaner skates were often dull even though the staff obviously had time to sharpen them.
Sami: I don’t understand how after investing 8 million into a renovation that there would be a lower quality of service. Dull skates (when they have a nice sharpener) and minuscule food program when there’s a “better kitchen.”'
But at least, Sami said, being able to borrow skates for free is one of the good things happening now.
But I said, "no it isn't. Not charging for skate rental is a bad idea."
"Why?!" read more
Feb.5, 2025
Shauna
Today Shauna Kearns came to the rink building for the picnic. Shauna first came to the park in 2018, to bake bread in the park oven for a dinner and talk she was giving at the Depanneur restaurant. The story is here. At that time Shauna was helping to train bricklayer apprentices in building ovens, in a special post-prison program in Pittsburgh. She was also running a lively bake oven (which she helped to build) in Braddock PA. In 2021, she returned to Toronto and began to do baking programs in a few of the city's outdoor bake ovens, notably Scadding and the Green Barns at Wychwood. When Public Health and Parks and Rec finally allowed the ovens to be used again at Dufferin Grove, Shauna ran a training session for a new group of part-time rec staff.
Today we talked, among other things, about how city staff are going about the project of updating park oven rules. Shauna also helped put up the fifth version of the CELOS reno "fixes still needed" display. It's been removed four times already.
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