Big On Bloor 2009

Saturday June 20th

The Big on Bloor Festival is intended to get people to visit their neighbours. Bloor street from Christie to Lansdowne was closed all day, and we had our tables in the middle of the street. Our display was located in the section of Bloor from Emerson to St. Clarens, and we were part of Yasi’s Friends & Neighbourhood set of tables. Jutta from the Dufferin Grove Park made arrangements for us to shared the shelter of a tent with Andreas neighbour, who we discovered there. He had a display from his research for CELOS Centre for Local Research into Public Space (CELOS - pronounced "see-loss") the people who have given us the original "parkcommons.ca" website space. Small world, I guess the we needed the Big festival to find this out!

The sun from the day before did not last. But despite the gloomy weather, and later the rain, people came out to see their neighbours. We didn't end up selling anything at all, I gave away a few souvenirs of the magic Butterflies with our community garden name and our website. But, I did talk with a lot of people about community gardens. In fact I was surprised by the kinds of questions that people were asking. So much so, that I had to write a story about what community gardens are!