Great Garden Search Contest

Contest started Monday, March 1st, 2010 and will be ending Friday, May 14 at 5pm.

Show the world that Toronto is a Community Gardening leader by helping us unearth our hidden gems!

The Toronto Community Garden Network (TCGN) is pleased to announce The Great Garden Search of 2010, a contest to find community gardens across the City of Toronto. The contest includes Etobicoke, Toronto, City of York, East York, North York and Scarborough, and it will appeal to scavenger hunters, neighborhood buffs, garden enthusiasts, and anyone who likes a challenge, while at the same time helping TCGN to document all of these hidden gems.

Why this contest?

TCGN wants to put Toronto on the map as one of the world’s leaders in community gardening. In order to do that we need to show how many community gardens we have covering this entire city: Etobicoke, Toronto, City of York, East York, North York and Scarborough.

What are community gardens?

Community gardens are places where people come together to grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers, families, and friendships. Community gardens are run by communities for communities, and can be organized in any way that the community decides.

Personal gardens are not eligible in this contest. Gardens must involve 3 or more households and cannot be in a residential backyard.

How to Participate:

To participate in the contest look at the Community Gardens Map listed on our TCGN website. Then, walk around, use Google maps, search high and low, to find community gardens that are NOT listed on the website.

When you find new gardens email your entries to Norma Dickinson: norma@foodshare.net or phone (416) 363-6441 ext. 279

In your email or phone call please include:

• Your Name:
  
• Your email or phone number:
  
• Name of Garden (if applicable):
  
• Location of Garden (including address if possible):
  
• Nearest Intersection
  
• Garden Contact Information.

How to win:

The grand prize will go to the participant who finds the largest number of gardens that are not on the TCGN website.
Bonus points will be awarded for gardens with garden contact information. i.e. garden coordinator’s name, email address, website or phone number but you must have gardener’s permission to give contact information to TCGN.

Contest Rules:

• Anyone and everyone are welcome to participate.
  
• The contest runs from March 1 - May 14, 2010.
  
• Gardens must be between Steeles Avenue and Lake Ontario, and between the Rouge River and Highway 27 to be eligible.
  
• If garden contact information is being provided, it must be either publicly available or the contest participant must have permission to provide it.
  
• Personal gardens are not eligible. Only community gardens are eligible. Gardens must involve 3 or more households and cannot be in residential backyards.

Prizes:

The contest winner, and the runners up, will be announced on Monday May 17, 2010.

• The Grand Prize is $150
  
• First Runner up: two Living Food Boxes
  And additional Runners up will also win fantastic prizes such as:
  
• Fiskars garden shears-titanium blade coating
  
• Books - Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail, autographed by the author - and - Real Food for a Change, by Wayne Roberts
  
• A Garden Essentials Gift basket - and a Book - Real Food For a Change, by Wayne Roberts
  
• Own Leafy Vegetables: Complete mini garden kit with seeds and peat pellets and planters
  
• A bag with Herbed Vinegars - and a Book - The Family Kitchen Garden: How to Plant, Grow and Cook Together - by Karen Liebreich, Jutta Wagner and Annette WendlandAnd
• More fabulous prizes to be announced!

Thank you to FoodShare, Live Green Toronto, Gayla Trail, Zora Ignjatovic, and Laura Berman for generously donating these prizes.

US survey shows grantmaking fell 8.4% in 2009

The Non-profit Times reports that during 2009 the amount of grants awarded by 75,000 foundations across the USA fell 8.4 % from the prior year. This despite foundations cutting costs of their own operations. The article predicts that US foundation giving will remain flat at the current level for the foreseeable future.

New Mind Space's Pillowfight May 8

Feathers fly and teddies soar as you converge for a giant urban pillow fight! Swing and whack as you evade pillow-wielding assailants. Bring a soft pillow at 3 PM and wait for the signal. Pillow fight!

Come say goodbye to Yonge-Eglinton Square - it is being bulldozed later this year so more stores can be built.

Costumes and funky pillows encouraged :)

Pillow Fight Toronto
Yonge-Eglinton Square @ 3:00 PM
Saturday, May 8th 2010
Rain or shine! Free and all ages!
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Words on the Wall, Apr. 21

WORDS ON THE WALL: GEOFFREY REAUME IN CONVERSATION WITH RUTH RUTH
To celebrate the re-issue of his groundbreaking study, Remembrance Of Patients Past (University of Toronto Press), scholar and activist Geoffrey Reaume will conduct a walking tour of the wall surrounding the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH ) grounds at 1001 Queen St. West. He will then guide the group to the Gladstone Hotel, where he will have an on-stage conversation Ruth Ruth Stackhouse of Friendly Spike Theatre Band. Three of the installation pieces from The Story Behind The Wall, an exhibition by Workman Arts (WA) inspired by Reaume’s text, will be featured on-stage. There will be a silent auction of bricks painted by local artists. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) for the purpose of purchasing commemorative plaques detailing the history of the 19th century patient-built wall and other aspects of unpaid patient labour. Marc Glassman, Executive Director of This Is Not A Reading Series, will host the evening event. – A TINARS event presented by University of Toronto Press, Gladstone Hotel, NOW Magazine, Torontoist.com, Take Five On CIUT, Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto and Workman Arts.
Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West, Toronto
Wed Apr 21: 8:00pm (Doors 7:30pm) $5 (Free With Book Purchase)

EVENT ITINERARY
Silent Auction Viewing Begins 4pm, Gladstone Hotel Ballroom,
Wall Walking Tour 6pm, Main Entrance, CAMH, 1001 Queen St West
Interview / Auction 8 pm (Doors 7:30pm), Gladstone Ballroom, Gladston Hotel, 1214 Queen St. West

REMEMBRANCE OF PATIENTS PAST Historian Geoffrey Reaume remembers previously forgotten psychiatric patients in his groundbreaking study, Remembrance Of Patients Past, by examining in rich detail their daily life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane (now called the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health - CAMH) from 1870-1940. Psychiatric patients endured abuse and could lead monotonous lives inside the asylum's walls, yet these same women and men worked hard at unpaid institutional jobs for years and decades on end, created their own entertainment, even in some cases made their own clothes, while forming meaningful relationships with other patients and some staff.

Using first person accounts by and about patients - including letters written by inmates which were confiscated by hospital staff - Reaume weaves together a tapestry of stories about the daily lives of people confined behind brick walls that patients themselves built.

GEOFFREY REAUME is an associate professor in the Critical Disability Studies Graduate Program at York University.

RUTH RUTH STACKHOUSE is a proud member of the psychiatric survivor community. She studied theater in New York City and is currently Theatre Director of the Friendly Spike Theatre Band. A long-standing activist, she has protested against institutional confinement and the exploitation of patient labour. www.friendlyspike.ca

THE PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVOR ARCHIVES OF TORONTO (PSAT) is dedicated to ensuring that the rich history of people who have experienced the psychiatric system is preserved for our community and the wider community as a resource from which everyone can share and learn. PSAT is a grass roots organization that is run for and by psychiatric survivors and seeks to reflect the broad diversity of views that are expressed by all people with a psychiatric history however they choose to self-identify. www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com

THE STORY BEHIND THE WALL is a mixed-media and cross-disciplinary project created by artists of the Workman Arts Project for Scotiabank Nuitblanche 2009. Six artists chose six former patients from the Toronto Hospital for the Insane as depicted in Geoffrey Reaume’s book Remembrance of Patients Past – Patient life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870-1940. Their goal was to create figurative sculptures to creatively and expressively tell the stories of these individual patients from the past who have mostly been confined to a history of silence.

WORKMAN ARTS (WA) facilitates aspiring, emerging and established artists with mental illness and addiction issues to develop and refine their art form through its arts training programs, public performance/exhibit opportunities and partnering with other art organizations. As well, WA promotes a greater public understanding of mental illness and addiction through the creation, presentation and discussion of the artistic media.
www.workmanarts.com

For Media / Info
Geoffrey Reaume: Andrea Wilson, awilson@utpress.utoronto.ca
PSAT Silent Auction: Andrea White, psychsurvivorarchives@gmail.com
TINARS: Chris Reed, coordinator@tinars.ca