The Massage Gallery: Blind Spot

Galleria Mall information website now up

www.galleriadevelopment.com

If you would like to become involved or learn more about DIG IN's efforts please see the DIG IN website, it is updated on a regular basic so check back often. Your ideas, information, suggestions and your participation in DIG IN events and meetings is needed and appreciated. You can join DIG IN's E-mail discussion and information site by contacting
diggingin-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If you have information that may be helpful, useful, interesting, please contact us at dyan@dyammarie.com.

By treating the neighbourhood as a creative site, the hope is to vitalize the process of urban planning. It returns the city to the aspirations of its citizens, opening the door for an expanded idea of civic life and assures the community a significant place within a wider context.

Dyan Marie

DIG IN: Diversified Initiative Guide for Improving Neighborhoods began as an
urban intervention art project by artist Dyan Marie. star-up June 2002

DIG IN: Dupont Improvement Group is now an active community improvement movement for the Bloor - Dupont West area.
An executive committee for Dupont Improvement Group was voted in and held its first of its monthly meetings Jan 2004

Founding Director:
Dyan Marie

Executive Committee, DIG IN: Dupont Improvement Group:

Patrick Jenkins and Ana Bailao - co-chairs
Shelley Durnin and Ian Letts - communications
Kevin Beaulieu - secretary
Maria - treasurer
Carmen Martino - librarian
Frank Margani - community outreach
Rebecca Peirson - funding-raising

Founding Director:
Dyan Marie

Advisors for DIG IN: Diversified Improvement Guide for Improving Neighbourhoods:

Adam Giambrone
Ecotecture
Noel Harding
Jim Melvin
Richard Rhodes
Don Schmitt
Eva-Marie Stern
Guy Walter
Brian Green

Email Monitor:
Janice Andrews

Website Assistance:
Stephen Marie- Rhodes
Bluewox

More Information: dyan@dyanmarie.com

DIG IN: General Information Overview

DIG IN Neighbourhood

The site, located in the Dupont - Bloor West area, is situated in the northwest corner of downtown Toronto, intersected by east-west and north-south rail lines. Once an outlying industrial area populated by residents that worked in the factories, it marked the Toronto city limits. As times changed after World War II and Toronto expanded, the area has come to face serious and entrenched social issues arising in part from its lost industrial base. The patchy makeup of the area has ensured little progress over the years. The result is a neighbourhood with a distinct lack of enhancing features, a fact that abets the depressed atmosphere arising from its urban troubles. Despite this, the area is primarily a family neighbourhood with a vibrant mix of nationalities, professions, and aspirations.

Neighbourhood Concerns

The Dupont - Bloor, Dufferin to the CN/CP rail lines area of Toronto is densely populated, yet, to date, it is under-supported with the resources to face its multiple, entrenched neighbourhood issues. As a result, there are pressures and stresses with which the neighbourhood has long-standing concerns. A description of the neighbourhood includes:
• A distinct lack of enhancing, positive physical features to the neighbourhood amidst a pronounced abundance of trouble spots.
• Entrenched pockets of dysfunctional residents crowded into low-rent, high-rise apartment buildings.
• An illicit drug and sex trade is pronounced
• No real recreational walking routes or desirable end
destinations for walks
• Laneways and streets misused and littered with rubbish
• Vehicle congestion, safety and traffic-pattern issues
• With 50% more children than average Toronto neighborhoods, families also have issues about safety, especially since cars have hit too many children.
• Few and poorly functioning neighbourhood parks
• Closed storefront businesses
• Its physical layout is not favorable to building a sense of community (three railway lines, for example, divide the neighborhood)
• The area also has little usable green space and few residential trees
• With its many family homes it provides affordable housing for families of all cultures and backgrounds
• A concentration of individuals living in poverty or who are among the working poor
• Families of new Canadians of widely diverse nationalities
• For many household adults, English is a second language• Low levels of education and high youth school dropout rate
• Poor relationship with the police
• Underused industrial buildings offer affordable rent and are beginning to attract individuals and small companies in the arts.
• A recently established homeless shelter is further expanding to offer additional, transitional housing with resistance from some of the community
• The neighbourhood is one of the city’s most contaminated with toxic chemicals
• Available tracts of land have attracted development and development offers for higher density units with questionable benefit to the established community or integration into the neighbourhood.
• The recent murder of an neighbourhood child, Holly Jones shocked, outraged residents.

The City of Toronto’s Social Indicators and Priority Areas study prepared in connection with the new City of Toronto Plan focuses on indicators of risk, or social vulnerability. The study identified this portion of the City as being in the second highest quartile of socio-economic vulnerability. Having regard to indicators such as low income, unemployment, social assistance, tenant households, lone-parent families, education less than grade 9 and tenant households spending 50% or more income on shelter costs.

QUOTES:

Adam Giambrone, Councillor for Ward 18, Davenport "DIG-IN continues to be a source of wonderful and creative ideas for enlivening our neighbourhood and for making it a better place to live and work. I am pleased to support their ongoing efforts."

"It’s become a dangerous place to live," wrote MARK BONOKOSKI, in the Toronto Sun in reference to living in Lansdowne/Dupont apartment towers.

Mario Silva, MP, Davenport, "DIG-IN continues to be the kind of community organization that effectively identifies the challenges facing our community and in so doing allows us to work together as a community to resolve these issues. I am pleased to continue to support their efforts."

"Ana Bailao, Candidate for Ward 18, "Enacting DIG IN’s masterplan would be the best thing that could happen to the neighbourhood, I am proud to have been a participant in helping DIG IN from the onset."

Tony Ruprecht, M.P.P. for Davenport writes, "The Lansdowne-Dupont neighbourhood is in process of change. Your ideas of how to improve our quality of life, from a ‘Green Walking System’ to a ‘Cultural Intensification of the T.T.C Barns’, should be applauded.

Brian Green, from Toronto Parks Department, at a Safety Audit for Wallace Emerson Park commented, "Local Parks are underused and therefore feel unsafe, to feel safer they need to be better used, it's a circle that needs to be broken. Well used parks – equally by men, women and childern – are an important indication of neighbourhood health. DIG IN has a strong opportunity and will to help improve the local parks and I support their efforts."

Start-up Approach

Founder Dyan Marie developed an ideas masterplan as a Community Arts Project to start-up a discussion and help begin a program of improvement action. The masterplan continues to be presented to the community in an on-going process to further the plan by including the community’s participation, suggestions, ideas and comments. The masterplan is offered as a way to charge the imagination and rethink the community. Also, it will be utilized as a guide for participation and on-going improvement efforts. The masterplan intends to be a flexible document, open to opportunity, revisions and better ideas and processes as they arise.

Community Participation

DIG IN has made, and continues to make, extensive outreach efforts to ensure a wide range of community participation in developing improvement ideas and actions. Over the last year DIG IN has had discussions and input about improving the neighbourhood as outlined on the masterplan with residents, businesses, cultural community members, elected officials, local developers and community services, such as: local Toronto Public Library branches, Community Police Officers from 11 and 14th Division, The Parks Department, Wallace Emerson Community Centre, Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre, The Dufferin Street Fire Station, local schools, Na-Me-Res, The Stop, Working Women, West Toronto Community Legal Services.

Importantly:

• DIG IN has held and continues to hold on-going community-wide public meetings,
• An area information news bulletin has been established and delivered door-to-door,
• Information posters have been posted in the community,
• A DIG IN email information group provides up-to-date information and discussion opportunities
• The DIG IN website (www.digin.ca) offers in-depth information ranging from history, community news, the ideas plans to up-coming meetings and activities.

professional and Cultural Advisors Participation

DIG IN’s intents to further develop a unique approach to neighbourhood improvement by engaging not only all the local community stakeholders but also leading professionals from the cultural and professional sectors. These volunteer advisors will bring an additional layer of creative and innovative ideas to urban problems, help foster fresh, advanced perspectives, and link the community to good will and attention of a broader community thereby increasing the neighborhood’s capacity for integration and success.

COMMUNITY IDEAS MASTER PLAN

The following outlines some ideas presented to the neighbourhood in community-wide meetings where they were discussed and approved. The intention is that this ideas masterplan will act as a guide for improvement and participation initiatives.

1 Green Walking System WALK HERE

WALK HERE — a community and public artwork that helps green and connect the Dupont West neighbourhood by creating an art-embedded walking system throughout the community that pulls it together as a “place.”

The intention is that walkway will become a source of attraction, pride and indigenous expression. This project will work with the many talented local people in the arts, crafts and trades to design and develop individual walkway sections. The walkway will become a fabric of changing original patterns and a beautiful, complicated motif reflecting the multi-cultural nature and skills of the community. It will be a unique attraction and will add a stable, individual character to a neighbourhood that is threatened by rapid change.

The walk would start along a revitalized Wallace Emerson Park and move west to Emerson Ave. connecting down to a greened Lappin Avenue, onto and across the CN railway lines, to an improved Campbell Street Park.

This walk is anchored by two massive developments now in progress or in planning stage. The Galleria Mall development now being discussed will add an addition 1400 plus families to the area and will look over the Wallace Emerson Park. The Standard development will add another 1400 plus families to the area across from Campbell Park but separated by the CN rail lines.

Revitalizing and improving access to these two parks will be vitally important in helping to accommodate these many new neighbours to ensure that they become integrated into the community. By linking the parks with a clearly signaled walkway we expand the sense of neighbourhood, create destinations for walks, courage exercise, foster relationships, keep more eyes on the streets, helping to make the area safer and more engaged.


Phase Two ensures that the walk will continues from Campbell Park down Campbell Ave. to Wallace Ave and stretches along to the Wallace CN/CP walkway rail overpass and the rail path in planning/progress along the rail lines south from the Junction to King. This would connect our neighbourhood with the downtown communities.

Phase Three will work with the Parks Department and its efforts to develop a bike path
along the hydro corridor north of Dupont that will help connect our neighbourhood to the east.

Phase Four plans to improve and connect all the parks in the area along streets that will develop greener landscapes, plant more trees and introduce traffic calming elements.

Getting started - DIG IN has supplied a grant proposal for the Parks Department to start the first link of the green walking system as well as improve safety and access issues for Wallace Emerson Park. The proposal details creating a walkway that resolves safety issues in the park being accessed through the Galleria’s Mall’s busy parking lot, as well, the walkway would reconnects the park to its internal sites and the surrounding community and provides better entrance points into the park. The artwork inlaid into the walkways surface will focus on activities and games providing for an enhanced appearance that will also provide an additional level of recreational park activity.

2 Walking Path Along CN Railway Lines

Utilize the green spaces currently edging the north/south CN railway lines that run west of Lansdowne Avenue. An unofficial walking path and small allotment gardens now edge this strip between Dupont and Bloor Street.

3 Cultural Intensification:

The Lansdowne TTC Barns Site become: Toronto Place
The long-empty and soon to be demolished TTC barns on Lansdowne Avenue become a cultural institution, “Toronto Place”. This new institution would present exhibitions exploring the history of Toronto including exhibits focusing on our rich multi-cultural heritage accompanied by leading contemporary forums and exhibitions engaged with disciplines that help create cities such as: public art, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and community arts.
• Additionally, the building could host a contemporary art biennial. A Toronto based contemporary art biennial has been in discussion for many years but there has never been a suitable location, this site would finally provide an excellent opportunity to proceed.
• A residential unit could also be built on this large site to make needed housing available and to help subsidize the operating cost of the Museum.
• Several residential units may be used as artist-in-residence accommodation for Museum-invited national and international visiting artists.
• A private foundation or The Toronto Public Library may be interested in opening up a branch or reading room focused on community arts, design, public art, architecture, landscape architecture, community arts and urban design.
• The location is excellent. It is one block north from the Bloor subway at the Lansdowne stop, a modest subway hop from the Royal Ontario Museum and directly north of the Queen Street West Gallery District.
• A cultural loop utilizing the convenience of TTC travel, could advertise a circle trip linking the Ceramic Museum, The Royal Ontario Museum, The Bata Shoe Museum and the proposed Toronto Place (all connected on the Bloor Line heading west). A short travel south on the Lansdowne Bus will lead to Queen Street West and the New Gallery District; then one could walk east to the Art Gallery of Ontario and 401 Richmond art complex, to see a play at the King Theater District and end the evening at a nightclub in the same area.•
The creation of Toronto Place would substantially help the troubled local community. A long-standing tightrope of drug activity stretches along Lansdowne Avenue, shuttling back and forth for years between Dupont and Bloor. Cut the rope by converting the vacant TTC barns into a cultural institution and it will become the revitalization engine for the entire area.
• International urban renewal experiments have explored placing cultural institutions in troubled communities with excellent results as in PS1 in New York, The Tate Museum in London
• The site is now contaminated with industrial toxins and the buildings were announced as unsalvageable. The buildings will be demolished and the cleaned. The process will take time and the projected completion date has not been confirmed.4 Bike path Along CP Railway RoadCreate a walking and bike path along the railway-controlled road that follows the east/west PC railway line just north of Dupont Street. An unused railway line begins at St.Clarens Ave. just north of Dupont and turns into a gravel road at Bartlett Street, the road continues east for miles. Additionally on the north side of the tracks the city parks department is working on long-term plan for creating a bike path along the hydro corridor that might be helpful in accessing our neighbourhood from the east.

5 6 7 New Development

Ensure that new development improves and relates positively to the area including:

5 Galleria Development,

Located at Dufferin and Dupont, proposed large-scale, high-density, 1600 unit, condominium development.

Concerns: demolition of the local Galleria Mall, the mall offers local shopping, is accessible by walking and supports many local small businesses and local jobs, also, related density and construction concerns.

Opportunities: Wallace Emerson Park will be expanded.

6 Chelsea Lofts,

Located at the southeast corner of Lansdowne and Dupont, proposed seven-story condominium.

7 General Electric Complex “The Standard”

Located at the southwest corner block at Dupont and Lansdowne, large-scale rental redevelopment project. Concerns: this development is designed to function like a walled community with little integration or benefit to the community.

8 Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre, Men’s Hostel

Located on Lansdowne Avenue south of Dupont, this one-year-old temporary homeless facility offers shelter to 45 men, sleeping in one room, many in bunk beds. The shelter provides meals and medical help, job and housing counseling. The shelter has been granted permanent statue and has plans to expand to provide additional transitional housing. The shelter needs to clearly communicate its intentions to the neighbourhood, act on community and city recommendations and be better integrated into the area.

9 Improve Wallace Emerson Park

Replan Wallace Emerson Park as a park that works for everyone. Our parks could be the spark for neighbourhood wide improvement actions. The parks hold out the opportunity to be places of sanctuary, reflection, exercise and fresh air. They are the first and often only contact with nature for many children. They should function as the social heart of engaged community life.

10 Improve Campbell Park

Revitalize Campbell Park as a safe, clean, green, well-serviced park for everyone.

11 Calm Traffic

Enact inventive ways to calm and improve traffic.

12 Environmental Approach

Explore new approaches to paving, road and sidewalk construction, planting trees and rising summer heat issues in the area.

ADDITIONALLY, WE NEED TO ENSURE:

• Inspection of problem housing, buildings and businesses (strip clubs) and their compliance with the law and community standards.
• Safe, sensitive schools that meet the needs of our children.• Clean, safe well-lit streets, laneways and parks.
• Opportunities to work locally by developing and supporting local businesses• Support of local businesses that train and employ neighbourhood youth and/or provide entry level training and apprentice programs
• Ensure the neighbourhood retains its individual character in the face of improvement by highlighting its unique multi-cultural qualities.
• Available and responsive community police officers active in the community, providing leadership (community safety audits), protection, reducing drugs, prostitution, and crime.
• Support and pressure for the people who are engaged in crime to help them to change their lives.
• Encouragement to walk, shop, hire, play and participate locally.
• A green, clean, safe and civil neighbourhood.Long term ImpactDIG IN intends that the long-term impact of its efforts will generate improvements to the psychological and physical landscape of the neighborhood. Social, environmental and cultural issues will be addressed and improved and the community strengthened through shared empowering experiences. The renewed landscape will offer walking paths, trees, green space, improved streetscapes, integrated development, neighborhood involvement and cultural and economic intensification. The process hopes to transform and vitalize the neighborhood, supporting an stable, empowered community that takes ownership of its concerns and participates in facilitating a vital and engaged place to spend a healthy lifetime.

Spring 2003 DIG IN events & projects

• DIG IN newsletter distributed to the area, issue #5, March 1, 2003
• Web site launched March 3rd, 2003
• Public meeting to discuss ideas plan March 4
• Public meeting and ideas workshop March 24, 2003
• Lunchtime meeting to research ways to make parks safe and inviting April 14, 2003
• Safety Audits for Wallace Emerson Park April 15, 2003
• Safety Audits for Campbell Avenue Parks April 17. 2003
• Developed and submitted two proposal for the Parks Department Incentive Fund for the improvement of local parks. July 25, 2003
• Initiated and worked with 11 Division police to close the message parlor at 1444 Dupont, closed April 28, 2003
• Discussion and action planning meeting to develop neighbourhood informal gardens. TBA
• DIG IN newsletter distributed to the area, issue #6, June 10, 2003
• Public meeting focuses on the west side of the neighbourhood to discuss progress on ideas master plan. June 18, 2003
•Launch of community photographic activity to encourage the community to look closely at the neighbourhood. June 18, 2003

IDEAS AND PLANS: IN PROGRESS, IN PLANNING OR IN DISCUSSION

Improving our local Parks

Develop ways to establish our parks as the focus of our communities, a place of sanctuary, reflection, exercise, fresh air, activities for everyone…. the social heart of an engaged community life.

Action To date: DIG IN organized Safety Audits for Wallace Emerson and Campbell Ave Parks, a number of use and safety issues have been identified and improvement recommendations. We hope the Parks and Recreation Department will implemented the suggestions as soon as possible.

Professional Volunteers for Better Communities Program

Establish a program to encourage corporate companies, cultural practitioners, universities and colleges to provide voluntary advice and assistance to communities at risk. A program of awards for recognition of participation could be developed with city/provincial support.

Action to date: A number of leading cultural professional have agreed to become volunteer advisors to review and help enact DIG IN’s masterplan and the City of Toronto has agreed to participate.

Economic Development Revitalization Program

DIG IN is in discussion with City of Toronto’s Economic Development, Culture and Tourism Department with the intention establishing support for including the Dupont/Bloor west community into its revitalization program. Application for inclusion must be well established before fall 2003, when the Economic development Office plans the budget the 2004 – 05.

Action To Date: Started discussion in Oct 2002, invited them to DIG IN public meetings, on-going process to supply them with DIG IN written material, meeting at their office April 2003. The Toronto’s Economic Development, Culture and Tourism Department stated that they are over extended but will discuss our participation in their program in the fall. They acknowledge that we have done a lot of work in the neighbourhood but cannot make any promises due to their lack of funds and limited staff.

Environment Incubator Urban Surface:

A community oriented workshop to explore, create and implement environmentally improved materials and processes for creative applications to hardtop surfaces. Production from the workshop could be applied to improvement opportunities such as community and public art projects, entrance markers and walkways in local parks, neighbourhood sidewalks, parking lots, design structures for community gardens, traffic calming elements and roof -top gardens.Programs of participation and education for local youth could be developed to introduce creative opportunities in cement construction. The initiative could support and draw upon the high number of residents employed in construction and have skills in traditional cement work and construction, as well as the large number of local residents working in visual arts and crafts with skills in art and design.

Action To Date: UCC Group, award winning hardtop construction firm has agreed to act as advisor for research and development.

Toronto Place, feasibility plan

Feasibility plan for The TTC Barns Site to be developed as a cultural institution of Toronto: ?Toronto Place
?
Action To Date: There has been a recent decision to demolish the building and the discovery that the site is more polluted that first expected, as well , their has been political discussion promoting the site for a location of a police station. Dig in is in waiting for more clarifying information. However, when the demolishing of the buildings has been completed, this four acre, cleaned area could become a good site for a community festival as a way to start to claim the location for community and cultural activity.

Community newspaper

Establishment of a community newspaper for residents (adults and children), business and the cultural community. The newspaper intends to link with surrounding neighbourhood to become a voice for uptown west by drawing attention to its concerns, ideas, opportunities, entertainments, culture, and events. After start-up the paper plans be self-sufficient with advertising funds

Documenting local voices: Stories from the Community

As a way to develop community appreciation and celebrate its unique qualities, DIG IN proposes a documentary event featuring interviews with local residents. The neighbourhood is home to rich multicultural composition and the stories residents have to tell are dramatic and riveting tales of bravery, hardwork and overcoming great obstacles to provide a life for themselves and their families. We have neighbours that escaped Cambodia in the time of the Khmer Rogue. Our local tailor was expelled from grade school in Iraq for not signing an agreement to spy on fellow students, without access to education he apprenticed in a trade. Another neighbourhood man worked for years to bring over his extended family from Pakistan, his father missed his birthplace and returned only to be kidnapped and murdered last summer.

Action to Date: Submited an artist project grant application to the OAC, results announced Jan. 2004

Celebrate Local Character and Skills: Festival and Program

As a way to retain and celebrate the indigenous character of the neighbourhood, a program and festival could be developed around skills in the arts and trades. This would draw on the construction-based talents that already employ many in the community and are a ready source of appreciation.The proposed activity is to create a community-oriented design/build program that will explore, create and install creative cement-based works that offer attractive, new points of beauty and interest to the neighbourhood within a functional framework. The program would be applied to improvement initiatives such as; entrance markers for local parks, design elements for new sidewalks and park walkways, design structures for community gardens, seating areas for parks, small plazas and containment curbs to mark pedestrian and playground activity. By including creative design, sculptural inlays, etched drawings, colour and cast elements, these new cement formations would transform utilitarian structural items into works of art.Ongoing benefits include ensuring that the neighbourhood retains an individual character by highlighting its unique multicultural qualities as expressed in the traditional excellence of the construction industry. The new, concrete-based design works will be a source of interest and attraction, making the area more inviting and engaged, fostering pride in both the neighbourbood and in traditional local skills. It will introduce and may encourage a new generation of youth to appreciate and perhaps apprentice in a highly employable trade. (The area now has concerns for high numbers of youth at risk with high youth school dropout and unemployment rates.) The projects will contribute to providing a safe, better-used, engaged, attractive and original neighbourhood by providing a cared-for appearance that invites residents to get out, explore and enjoy their community. The more the community is out walking the area, meeting their neigbours, the safer the neighbourhood will be. The projects will be a focus of renewal and appreciation for individual community members and a symbol of renewal for the neighbourhood.A local festival would be developed in co-ordination with completed projects and would include demonstrations in cement laying, mould making, landscape gardening, laying walkways, brickwork, tile-work, mosaic, casting, etc. An educational component would be directed towards youth. Local construction-based industries and unions could get involved and promote apprenticeship programs.The festival would be promoted citywide and could be linked to other events such as garden, trade, art or home shows. It could become a vehicle for establishing a positive attitude and reputation for this area, a source of local pride and participation, way to bring income into the area and a way promote local small businesses in art and construction trades.

Community Photographic Activity

The neighbourhood is invited to participate in a photographic project developed to help give expression to the sorrow and outrage felt in response to the brutal murder of Holly Jones. DIG IN will provide free cameras to participants to use photography as a way to look carefully at our community and make a collection of the things we see that focus our interest, concern, pleasure, anger, joy…
THIS PROJECT IS INTENDED AS
• A monument to Holly, her family and community.
• A way to see the local in the sharp focus that photography provides.
• Encouragement to get out, explore and claim back the neighbourhood.
• A means to pull the community together.
• As a tool to support discussion and community improvement efforts.

Artist Statement:

DIG IN: Diversified Initiative Guide for Improving Neighborhoods began as an urban intervention art project by artist Dyan Marie to develop a neighbourhood ideas masterplan. By treating the neighbourhood as a creative site, Marie intended to vitalize the process of urban planning and help return the neighbourhood to the aspirations of its citizens. The project opened the door to an expanded idea of civic life and continues to work toward assuring the community a significant place within a wider social and cultural context.
DIG IN is now a community and cultural improvement movement with wide participation in the neighbourhood and with aspirations to become a model for ways to improve troubled communities.

Appreciation:

DIG IN appreciates the concern, ideas, advice, suggestions and volunteer help that has been offered.

Special thanks is extended to the following:
• Councillor Adam Giambrone, Constituency Assistant, Kevin Beaulieu and the councillor's office for on going advise, support and help
• Ontario Arts Council, Community Arts, Artists in the Neighbourhood, awarded an artist grant in 2002/2003
• Recent Councillor Mario Silva and Ana Bailao from the City of Toronto have been helpful in their advice, participation and support and have printed and distributed the DIG IN news bulletin
• 14 and 11 Division Police Departments for help in Safety Audits and being responsive to DIG IN concerns.
• Richard Rhodes, editor of Canadian Art magazine, for editorial advice
• Stephen Marie-Rhodes, Bluewox, computer upkeep and website development
• Janice Andrews, monitor for the DIG IN email discussion and information group• Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Center, for community outreach and co-signing the OCA grant application•
• Tony Ruprecht and Detective Neilson, 11th Division for their fast response and success in working to close the massage parlor located at Campbell Ave. and Dupont Street
• Perth Randolph and Dovercourt Boys and Girls Club for creating an excellent, safe and constructive environment for hundreds of neighbourhood children and for keeping my son gainfully occupied at the club while I work on DIG IN
• Perth Dupont Library, for all their work helping to support the neighbourhood and DIG IN’s efforts and projects
• The Dupont/Bloor residents, bussinesses and service groups that have helped and participated.
For more information contact:
Dyan Marie: dyan@dyanmarie.com 416 539-8129