FoWP’s Spring BBQ and Gardening Party was a raging success! We fed upwards of 100 people with amazing home made food by community members as well as items donated by local businesses. We planted in the garden, did some fence art and shared an Indigenous land acknowledgement as well as thoughts, feelings, poems, songs, comedy and music! It really felt like a peoples park! Thanks to everyone who helped out! Low-income community doing it for ourselves!
Thanks to Park People for their support!
The Junction is being gentrified at an accelerated pace. As developers take over, the poor are driven out and affordable rental housing is destroyed. The poor are stigmatized and at risk, ill at ease in their own neighbourhood. FoWP seeks to work with organizations who are committed to empowering low-income communities.
Climate change is a global threat and talk is not enough. We are reaching the tipping point and FoWP (alongside other organizations) will educate and empower people in protest. The Friends of Watkinson Park have been committed to the preservation of green space and a place to go for low-income people. We support radical transformation in favour of a sustainable future. Respect the environment!
Friends of Watkinson Park recognize that we are on Indigenous land. As a group we work alongside Indigenous people and other organizations towards recognizing the Indigenous history of the Junction.
Friends of Watkinson Park are continuing this work – the sleepover is just the beginning!
PLEASE JOIN US!
The Friends of Watkinson Park is organizing our fourth Party in the park to celebrate Spring time. Please come and bring some art, a poem or song, a contribution to the food table, a native plant for the garden or just your fine self!
Friends of Watkinson Park had a busy 2016. FoWP tackled the city over the un-agreed upon changes in the park design, dealt with police harassment of community members, organized an amazing celebratory party for the park opening, worked on public critiques of gentrification and continued to build our process as a group of low-income organizers.
The frustrations that FoWP experience over the outcome of the park renovation and the process leading up to it, is being researched. FoWP want to know how this un-agreed upon park design came about given all our efforts to make sure of community involvement and city government transparency. FoWP have made an FOI request for all the documents pertaining to the park renovation. FoWP have received from the city and parks a selection of emails and designs but no stakeholder info or budget info. Stakeholder info is important because the city has claimed that other stakeholders influenced the park design – outside the democratic process. So FoWP have an appeal in for the rest of the documents. Going through what was provided is already illuminating and FoWP will be working on an article with the full story of our experience with the city and parks.
For the coming year we have lots on our plates: Indigenous history project, monthly community feasts and clothing give aways (we are inspired by the Allan Gardens project), tending to the native plant gardens that are there. Despite the city, we will persist in creating a people’s nature park where low-income people feel welcome and at home.
Friends of Watkinson Park met yesterday to go over the latest version of the proposed design. We have been informed that construction on the park will begin the first week of August and take about 2 months weather permitting.
While we are satisfied with some aspects of the design, there are many features that have been added or changed and that don’t correspond to the agreement made at the public meeting between FoWP, the community and the city (Gord Perks office, Clive, Dan and Michael) September 24, 2015. These changes are a cause for great concern to FoWP:
We would like to remind everyone that FoWP is a public community group who worked very hard for 7 months to develop this park design through a democratic process with the neighbourhood. FoWP are also recognized by Gord Perks as an equity group who are working to protect the low-income inhabitation of the park in the face of diminishing accessible space in a neighbourhood that is very quickly gentrifying.
Our original mandate from the park users is to redevelop the park towards a restful, reflective and calming space. The vision that the community came up with is beautiful and uniquely reflective of the community – FoWP are not sure why the city seems to be in such resistance to it, why there is such a push for a generic park. In the original design, swings were the popular choice for a kids play structure. FoWP agreed to a climbing structure as a compromise in good faith. At the meeting a very different, much smaller play structure was shown. The only adaptation agreed to was that the play structure should be a natural color. Currently, there are few kids who come to the park. There is no need to expand the play structure. There are large kids play structures in all surrounding parks and there is no need for such a structure in Watkinson Park. This has been articulated many times.
It’s dispiriting to get this design a month before construction is to happen. Members of the FoWP community feel frustrated and betrayed. It appears that the city is working in favour of gentrifying the space rather than acknowledging the current use of the space as legitimate and important to respect and maintain. Getting the design with such short notice of the construction date feels as though you are limiting our ability to dialogue and to resist those changes to the design that have not been agreed to at the community meeting.
FoWP insist that the park design agreed to at the city held meeting is adhered to. FoWP wont be deterred in our work to protect the park and advocate for the community agreed upon plan.
FoWP is requesting a meeting as soon as possible with the city and MEP to address these issues.
PEOPLE AND ANIMALS ALL NEED A PLACE TO BE!
The FoWP will be meeting the first and third Saturdays of every month. If the weather is permitting we will be in Watkinson Park. Otherwise we will be in the Common Room of 2750 Dundas St. W. (just west of the park). Knock on the window to enter. Bring snacks to share if you feel.
Everybody is welcome!
Come and see what we are up to.
The bird feeders are well attended and we have had to restock them twice already. Maybe we can attract some regular visits from cardinals, blue jays, finches, robins, doves, chickadees…
We’re still awaiting the final design and start date for the park renovation, but in the meantime we are gathering info on seed exchanges and native plants (and where to get them).
FoWP are also looking forward to gardening. We may start with a fence garden… work on a green wall.
Imagining a critters park…
Friends of Watkinson Park is starting its spring work by installing some bird feeders in the park. We will have to make an extension pole to get the bird feeders into the trees have been radically pruned and the the lowest branches are quite high up. We put up one yesterday and hope it is still there today. We would like to attract some cardinals, woodpeckers, and other local birds to the park.
We are also planning a Spring Party with a fire bowl. Originally FoWP thought end of April would be a good time, but it turns out that it is predicted that there will be more snow this April than we’ve had all winter, so we’ve postponed it until mid-May.
We have a lot of ideas as to what activities to do for the party: a spring cleaning swap meet, a fence garden, bird house/feeder making, another 50/50 draw (cause that was really fun), t-shirt making… and we want to find some music – either live or maybe even dj!
We are anxiously awaiting the final design proposal from MEP. Last we heard construction would take place this summer. We still have some kinks to sort out such as ashtrays in the park… we were expecting to have some installed, but now we found out that there is a smoking by-law prohibiting smoking less than 9 meters from a children’s play area safety surface. Some of the low-income residents have received tickets of around $300 which are impossible for them to pay. We are meeting with Gord Perks this week to see if we can figure out how to maintain a smoking area in the park.
Residents ‘happy’ to be back in Dundas-Watkinson Parkette despite design disappointments | InsideToronto.com
The Friends of Watkinson Park 