Cookie Roscoe

AUDIO INTERVIEW

SUMMARY

February 5, 2019

00:39  TRANSFORMATION AND FIRST STEPS: How I got involved: 1993: “Howard Joy, was our City Councillor and he announced that the property had just been declared surplus to the TTC and if we didn’t want to see high rises go up in the neighbourhood we should go speak to our neighbours. And I thought, ‘Oh, what a perfect opportunity’. 

01:04  Early resistance: And I went down the street and the house closest to the property was the first door that I knocked on. And the guy opened the door and said to me, ‘GET it through your head! THAT property is SOLD!’ and he slammed the door in my face. And I felt like a bull to the red flag. I had latched onto an opportunity to meet people and talk to my neighbours and I had just heard from the horse’s mouth himself, from the City Councillor, that the property was not sold and was just declared surplus. So I wanted to get to the bottom of it.”

02:12  Lobby the Neighbours: “So where that led me to next was to go and talk to my neighbours. And I did. I walked around with a clipboard for hours. Once a week or so. And spoke with people at the school and the community centres around. You know when there was a church picnic and stuff like that I would talk to the people there and say ‘we have an opportunity here’. These buildings have been declared surplus and there’s a possibility that we could see a park or something happen there.” 

02:56  USE OF BARNS: Parking lot: They had been used as a parking lot. 

03:06  As storage: They stored the old red rockets in there sometimes. There was a lot of different things that kind of came and went.”

03:44  TRANSFORMATION AND EARLY MEETINGS: Councillors & Community Groups: “There were meetings. Here, there and the other place. Ila Bossons was City Councillor after that, and John Adams as well. There was kind of 2 councillors that were involved in the project. And we went to meetings at different people’s houses called by the Taddlewood Heritage Association and the City Councillors, over the course of the next six years.” 

Artscape 1993/94: There were a variety of meetings and at one of them Artscape. Artscape was early on. I would say ‘93 or ‘94. They came and were invited to get involved in the process. Richard, Tim Jones was not yet on. He didn’t want to say no but he just did not feel empowered to say yes to anything.

04:55  Many Ideas, No plan: /Are you trying to find the vision and then the money?/ It was a strange time actually because I remember feeling like there was huge potential and I did not know what was possible. I really wanted, I felt it was the job of people like Ila Bossons and John Adams to present us with a menu of what was feasible. And yet, I just couldn’t get them to do that.

Too many suggestions: “And we would go to these meetings and there’d be neighbours saying things like, oh crazy stuff.”  

05:31  Highway idea: “I remember there was one Parks and Rec meeting that was held and somebody wanted to turn it into a four lane highway and we were like. ‘Wait! You are aware this is like a block long, you know.’ And they were saying ‘Yeah, but don’t be stupid. You could park cars on both sides. It would be great!’

05:57  Too many suggestions: “It was insane. It should be a bowling alley, it should be a kids swimming pool. You know, it’s like ‘Is that feasible? It does have pits. I don’t know? Could you? You guys are the politicians. Surely you have access to people who do these things and yet in those years I would go to these meetings and I’d come away shaking my head going ‘Well I’m still no closer to understanding what is possible’.” 

06:27  Don’t Deserve: “And I remember saying we want a park. Many, many people were saying “Let’s turn this into a park. How do we turn this into a park?” And Ila Bossons said, ‘You don’t deserve a park’ Which again was another bull to the red flag moment.”

06:48  Proof needed: “I assume what she was talking about that there’s enough parks in the neighbourhood and Peter McKendrick really latched onto that and proved that we were quite a park deficient area and that a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there didn’t add up.”

 07:15  Political Support: “So that’s 1999, somewhere around there things really began to heat up and with the election that was coming up in 2000, or 99, somewhere right around that time. Rob Davis and Joe Mihevc were kind of looking at the project. They weren’t councillors here yet, both of them said, ‘Yeah, we would be in support of maintaining it as a park... Let’s designate it as park and then design the pull down menu’. Which made a lot of sense to me.” 

07:55  BARNS AS PARK: Parks and Rec: “And, Parks and Recreation said, ‘Okay, if we’re going to have a park well here’, and they began a series of meetings where they showed us templates. There was an overview of the park and then there was a template of a baseball diamond and we just kind of moved it around this way and that. And they were showing us it wouldn’t fit there. Nor would a soccer field, nor would all of this stuff. And nobody was thinking of retaining the buildings”.  

08:36  TTC CHALLENGES: Subway Accident: TTC subway serious accident she describes 1997 or ‘98  [think she means the 1995 St. Clair West crash] led to TTC selling Barns property? [sold to the City in 1996 for $1.00.] 

09:18  BARNS FACILITY: Toll Keeper’s Cottage: “Now there was that crazy little house that is now down...the Toll Keeper's cottage. It appeared on the property a year or so before that [not sure if she means 1997 or 98] on skids. It was moved from a private citizen’s yard over here down the hill. They just wanted it out of their yard. It was stored over at the TTC Barns.” 

09:52  BARNS DEMOLITION / TTC CHALLENGES: Subway Accident Damages: And then they were going to tear the buildings down. And we learned that was attached to this terrible accident... And these two offers for sale, John Adams was the one who told me about this years later... They had been offered 1.3 million for the site as is with the buildings standing and 4.4 million with the buildings knocked down. So the TTC made an urgent move to knock the buildings down because this terrible accident had resulted in a lawsuit and the settlement was 4.4 million. So it was a tidy way of getting a surplus property off the books and settling this lawsuit all in one fell swoop and I’m sure it must have seemed quite elegant.”

10:58  Demolition Halted: “So at the apocryphal story that I tell, which I’m not really too certain of the complete honesty of, but I still love to tell this story, is that we were 18 days away from the wrecker’s ball.” 

11:13  Underground Creek: “And Carol McLaughlin who is a real estate agent who lives in Wychwood Park was talking to one of her neighbours, and the neighbour she was talking to was a much older woman who said ‘Well it’s a terrible shame that they’re tearing those buildings down’ because the bins and the wrecking balls were assembling. And she said, ‘You know, I have a photograph.’ She went into her house and brought it out and gave it to Carol and it was the same one that we’ve gotten on the wall now. I think it’s the 1913 one, of people skating in front of Barn 1 which was the only Barn that was built at the time. And Carol turned the photograph over and on the back of it, it said ‘Skating on Poverty Pond’... And Carol, as a real estate agent, knew that if water had flowed through that site it meant that when they tore the buildings down they could not build higher than 4 storeys.”

12:30  Ownership Issue: “And she went down to the archives that afternoon to prove that Taddle Creek had flowed through the property. So they couldn’t build higher than 4 storeys. And what she discovered was that when this was the town of Bracondale, that property was our park and we loaned it to the Toronto Civic Railway. Who then loaned it, in 1921 to the TTC, who had no bill of sale, who had no deed. It had no right to sell the property. It did not belong to them... It belonged to the City of Toronto still. And it wasn’t the TTC’s to sell. And that was the turning point.”  

14:23  BARNS IN THE COMMUNITY: Community Hub: People knew, with the buildings, it’s a magnet for people. 

14:25  Farmers’ Market Engages Community: “You know the Farmers’ Market is over 10 years old now, and I always worried it was going to lose its attraction but those sexy Barns, they just keep coming through. People love them.”

15:17  SAVING THE BUILDINGS: Community Interest: “Councillor Mihevc won the election and the first thing he did, that I know of is that shortly after he was elected, within days, he announced a meeting at St. Mathew’s House on the topic of the TTC Barns. There were almost 300 people in the room. And he said, ‘By show of hands, who wants to see the buildings saved?’ And 299 hands went up. And he said, ‘And who doesn’t?’ And Howard Levine’s hand went up.”

15:54  TRANSFORMATION AND BUILDING THE TEAM: Joe kind of took it as a mandate. It seems pretty clear there’s community support for this and lots of ideas were tossed around at the meeting and Councillor Mihevc moved ahead with getting Parks and Recreation on board. Building the crew that would be needed to put a project of this size together. 

16:31  Financial: Many were involved. Metcalf Foundation key group. 

16:42  Artscape’s Role: “Artscape is an arm’s length body of the City of Toronto, so it was as natural as asking Parks and Rec. So Artscape came in and held a meeting at the Barns for a request for Expressions of Interest.”  

16:56  BARNS AND FOOD SECURITY: Greenhouses: “And Gene Trundel is a gardener rock star in Toronto who showed up at that meeting and walked around waving his hands saying ‘We could feed all of the homeless of Toronto with what you could grow in these buildings as greenhouses... And it too was just an incendiary idea, something that very much lit for me inside. That made people go, ‘Wow! Yeah, yeah. “Artscape loved that idea. People loved that idea.”

18:15  TRANSFORMATION AND ARTSCAPE’S ROLE: Requests Exp. of Interest, Artscape... gave tours they put out as far and broad as possible and they put together a proposal. And the City liked their proposal.

18:36  Initial Proposal After Artscape’s initial proposal they had to step away and go to ground for 2 years and stay silent. And it was so difficult and painful to be part of the process to get the City to accept it for those 2 years without knowing... it wasn’t tremendously fleshed out, but it was very beautiful. And in that period of time, that’s when the Metcalf Foundation came in. 

19:11  BARNS AND FOOD SECURITY: Contacted Nick Saul 

19:21  The STOP Involved: “Phoned Debbie Field from Food Share. I believed there had to be this food growing component to this. /How Stop became involved?/ Yes, Debbie said I already have a place but you should call Nick Saul....Nick said ‘That is very interesting.’ And he came out to a couple of the meetings. And he, Joe Mihevc, Debbie Field, we were all here in this living room at this table, actually and Sandy Houstan.” 

First donations: And it was, I was told later, a kick in the pants, half a million dollars. Because it was such a good idea and nobody, everybody was shooting ideas around about it but nobody was saying, Yes, let’s commit to this.” 

“And the Metcalf Foundation said here’s your first money. And many, many others… Culture Toronto came in with matching funds. A lot of other organizations came together.” 

20:27  TRANSFORMATION AND FINANCES: Community Fundraising: “The Taddlewood Creek Heritage Association in the neighbourhood had to prove that the community was behind it and held ‘Sweet on the Park’ and donated 30,000 to green the first acre. And that was money raised by folks in the neighbourhood.” 

22:24  TRANSFORMATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSE: “Councillor Mihevc commissioned a study and Goldsmith was the architect that took it on and did the study. And the person in his office that did it coined the phrase ‘Suitable for Arts and Community Reuse Purposes’ And immediately, with the greenhouses and all of that... we were all talking about how to make this as environmentally sustainable as possible.” 

22:59  TRANSFORMATION AND DESIGN: Layout office spaces always for environmental organizations plus arts organizations/activities.

24:06  Architect: Struck committee to choose. 

24:38  TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGES: Parking:  “Parking, Parking, always parking. It came up so much, every single time you talked about the project... Anybody that you spoke to. Well as long as it doesn’t bring more cars into the area.” 

26:00  BARNS CONSTRUCTION / EVENTS: Timeline: 2009 Barns opened, 2007 Farmers’ Market started, 2003 Sweet on the Park and 2007 started lighting fire in the bake oven. 

27:04  TRANSFORMATION AND CREATING SUPPORT: Tours: “Before the project was decided one of the things that really helped us, that helped people decide the project, was opening the doors – doing Doors Open Toronto. Any time you opened the doors and let people walk through it was like turning lights on in people’s heads. They would go, ‘Oh my god! I had no idea’ people would say to me, ‘I don’t understand why you’re so passionate about a bunch of old garages.’ And then you would open those doors and the vaulted 21 ft high ceilings, and the light through the skylights, and stuff... So we tried to do that as much as possible and the small handful of people that were opposed to the project tried to stop us as much as possible. /How did they do that?/ Well, they complained to the City about everything that we did and at one point I used to be able to go over and just turn the latch and open the door and say here you go and they involved the city’s insurance dept. So that I was no longer allowed to borrow a key, or to go there by myself, or to show it to anyone without getting an insurance waiver. And then I was not able to get the insurance waivers. So on and so forth.’”

28:29  Ice Rink: “Peter McKendrick would go over with a hose and flood a rink in the winter. And it was beautiful. And it brought people together. And when people were together on the property they would look over to the buildings and go, ‘You know, this isn’t that bad.’”  

28:47  Anti Movement: There was a newspaper that circulated in the neighbourhood speaking about the TTC project and how undesirable their Farmers’ Market would be. And it would only bring more people to agitate. 

29:24  BARNS’ COMMUNITY ICE RINK: Community Engagement: “By putting the rink there in the winter people were won over. /And did it bring these different groups?/ It brought everybody. And Everybody would pick up a shovel and take a turn shovelling. And everybody understood that this was a little bit naughty. We were on property we weren’t really supposed to be on.”

29:50  Flooding: “I’ll tell you a magical story. Peter did have permission from Parks and Rec. He had a special key to turn the water on. But they didn’t want him sharing it with everybody, so they were like ‘This is kind of on the QT, okay. Just use this’. Because if he used it wrongly the fire hydrant’s could be out of operation in the dead of winter when a house could burn down. So we’re entrusting you with this very important thing... So Peter was flooding with a fire hydrant and very very carefully. But he wasn’t bragging about it. So there was this atmosphere of, ‘look at us out on this rink. This is so great.’ And people had a sense that they kinda weren’t supposed to be there.” 

30:42  Anti Movement: “So the negative faction were sitting there drumming their fingers on the table watching people have a fabulous time out on this rink all the time. So they did what they do and they got in touch with the folks at the City’s insurance dept and they said,’ There’s a great big slippery spot in the middle of the park.’ And the city on the one hand the insurance dept had no idea what the other hand, the Parks and Rec dept were doing. And that this was a perfectly legitimate rink here.” 

31:18  Salting Rink: “They sent a truck over to salt the rink. And I was walking my kids to school and a dad came loping around the corner, with terror writ large all over his face. “They’re salting our rink!’ And everybody dropped their kids off and ran down to the rink at the end of the street. And there was a guy cutting open bags of salt and pouring them out onto our rink. And people were gathered around, standing, beseeching him to stop what he was doing. And he was between a rock and a hard place. ‘My boss told me I have to do this today.’ And all these people were weeping at him and so sad and angry and everything. He had tried to do it the night before and they’d shovelled it all off.”

32:14  Community Unites: And the word was getting around, ‘I think somebody from the City salted our rink.’ When the dad saw it happen the next morning. So this guy was under very firm instructions. ‘I don’t care what anybody says. You salt that rink.’ The legend is, he had tears in his eyes as he was doing it. And everybody begged him. And the minute the truck drove away we shovelled the salt off of the rink. But it was the making of it...Everybody in the neighbourhood was so incensed... In so many ways these negative, nasty people shot themselves in the foot over and over again.

33:54  FARMERS’ MARKET: belongs to farmers and the STOP.

34:32  Finding Farmers: With husband and daughters drove around the province for 2 years looking for farmers for market. Found not a single one. Find them one at a time. Woo them. STOP gave enough time to develop market. 

35:10  TRANSFORMATION: Personal Satisfaction: When I walk down the street now, to those buildings that I get to work in, I do often have this pinch me, I’m dreaming moment. You know, it’s so amazing that it actually came true. That the dream really was realized by so many people.  

35:34  Individuals Involved: “Vid Ingelevics and I talked once a day for 2 years. A genius artist, imaginary, in the neighbourhood. You know another bull to the red flag. Was not going to accept that these buildings were sold. That artists couldn’t work together. That places like this would not be as great as a gift to the City as anything else a developer could build.”

36:08  Artistic Community:  Vid understood innately that when you open the doors people will come in. And so he opened the doors. He started the St. Clair Art Walk. He walked up and down St. Clair. And found businesses that were interested in hosting art. He brought artists inside those Barns and let them photograph, record, perform inside the Barns when they were just raccoon infested. And the artwork still stands. Edward Burtynsky was one of the artists he brought in.

36:58  Individuals Involved: Such vision. Schuster Gindin, Elizabeth Cinello, Peter McKendrick. A hundred neighbours that came together. Bernadette Peets... none of them were saying, ‘No, my vision.’ All of them were saying was ‘Let us have a vision’. 

37:13 Individuals Involved: “Paulina Fasula said, ‘Let us not be afraid to ask for something magnificent.’ What a beautiful thing.”  

37:23  Individuals Involved: “Terry McAuliffe was a historian who virtually got up from his deathbed. It was six weeks before he died of a brain tumour. And he was very, very ill. And he got people to help him walk up that aisle at a Community Council meeting and he gave his 4 minute deputation. The part that truly stands out in my mind: ‘These buildings are not merely another rich man’s house. They’re public buildings and as such were built at our behest and represent what we are capable of when we pull together.’”

38:26  BARNS: 10 Years later: “And it’s been a decade now. And it’s not perfect. And we fumble, and we falter, but it behooves us to continue to pull together. We must. They’re standing there inviting us to do so, still. Because of that community of people that came together and said, ‘This must happen. We must have this.’”

38:56  TRANSFORMATION: Anti Movement: The 6 or so people that wanted to see the buildings torn down, because they believed that their property values would be best served by having million dollar townhouses ring a so called passive park in the middle. Those folks mounted a website and they did everything that they did anonymously.

39:19  Community Support Website: “Colin Viebrock and his partner, Camilla Holland built a website where they invited people to put their name on the website. And inside of the first year we had over 700 names. Before we took the website down a year later there were 1200 people who signed up. Mostly from the City of Toronto, but there were people from Wales who came across this vision of a park and said, ‘Yeah, I would put my name to that. That is valuable. That is worth doing.’ “

39:56  TRANSFORMATION: Vision: “And we didn’t even know who the tenants were going to be, or what it was going to look like. But this notion of, ‘Let’s ask for something magnificent here.’ We’ll struggle towards building something magnificent there when we have it.” 

40:38  FARMERS’ MARKET: “A young man I just met, he’s opening a grocery store in the neighbourhood. And we talked a little bit about why he was opening a grocery store. And he invited me to come back to his grocery store. And I said, ‘Well I run that Farmers’ Market. You and I probably have lots to talk about on that front too. And he said, ‘Oh, you’re lucky because that had to be easy (big laugh) ‘Oh my friend, there were people who were opposed to it.’ And he said, ‘Why? It’s the chandelier of the neighbourhood.'' Isn't that lovely?

41:49  TRANSFORMATION: Anti Movement and City Council: We were at a Midtown Community Council meeting and it went on until 4 am. And Denzil Minnan-Wong sat with his feet up and his hands behind his head. He announced at the beginning of the meeting, ‘I’m voting against this!’ And then he put his feet up and whistled throughout everyone’s deputation. And the same 6 negative people made their deputations and the other 60 of us made our positive deputations. And Denzil Minnan-Wong whistled through all of them. And at the end of the evening, I think it was 2 am, when he said, ‘I defer this.’ And I didn’t understand that just meant that he was putting it off. I thought that it was over. And I was devastated that night.” 

42:41  TRANSFORMATION: Personal Low Point: “I got home about 4 and I woke my husband up as I was getting into bed. And he said, ‘What happened?’ And I said, ‘It’s over. It’s done.'' And my husband got so emotional he got kind of weepy about it and he said, ‘No! It can’t be!” And in the two hours I had come to this place where I’d left it all on the track. I realized what I was feeling was relief and I was glad that it was over. It had been such a monumental task. The fight. The phoning and the getting people out to meetings. Not knowing really what I was talking about. Just trying to convince people that we could have something beautiful here but we have to keep fighting for it, we have to keep pulling together for this. And then being told, ‘You’re done’  Felt actually, like a huge relief. And the next day I was in mourning.”

43:52  But later that day I found out, no, it’s just being deferred. It’s not over. We just have to pick up and start fighting again. And I was physically depressed. I really had to go lay face down on the bed for a day or two. And try to decide whether I had it in me to pick it up and keep doing it. 

44:26 COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: Neighbours: “I was talking about someone here and I said you know I’ve lived a few doors down from this person for 20 years and I don’t know if we’re friends or not. And the other person said, ‘Yeah, but you’re neighbours. And I realized, this is very intelligent. We owe different things to our friends than we owe to our neighbours. But we do have a debt to our neighbours. There are things we owe them. And whether they are your friends or not, they are your neighbours.”

45:32  FARMERS’ MARKET: Food Distribution: “The original intent was to completely subvert the present system of food distribution... I don’t know if we’ve quite achieved that, but we have achieved a model of that. And it’s only growing. It’s only getting better.”...

 46:00  “It hits a maximum point 6 or 7 years ago. There just isn’t more room for vehicles and chaos in the space that we have. So we started a wait list, and we now have a wait list that is longer than 10 years... of vendors.”

 46:29  Composition: “So Toronto Public Health looks at a Farmers’ Market as a farmers market provided it is 49% non-farm vendors and 50% plus one farmer vendors. So I work with as many as 40-45 farmers a year. But, some of them only come for corn season. Or for strawberry season...”

 47:08  Crafts: Crafts are strictly reserved for farmers at our market. If you are a farmer vendor and you want to bring some knitted woolies out of what you sheared off your sheep that’s fine. But we don’t bring in crafters at all out of respect for artists who live in the building.    

47:37  Composition: One of the things I learned managing Farmers’ Markets is that if you offer top flight farmers, such as the ones that we host at our market, anything but top flight food, they will disappear. One of my farmer’s said to me when my daughters started dating, ‘You should tell your girls what I taught my girls. If they’re not worth feeding, don’t bring them here.’ [laughter!]  

48:40  Retaining Vendors: If all you have is fast food for farmers to eat you are not going to attract the best farmers to your market. So every non-farm vendor at our market has to purchase inputs for what they made from our farmer vendors. That’s a really important part of that. 

49:11  Composition: “So a cheese producer is somebody who has a farm and animals to milk and the time, somehow or other, to produce all their own cheese. And there aren’t very many of those in the province. And if there are, they’re only producing a few small types of cheese. 

51:40  Except for  Monforte. Ruth Klahsesn is a miracle worker and produces many of the finest cheese in the province.”   

49:38  Cheese Monger: “We have Dave Smyth who goes to small dairies’ operations and purchases many amounts of cheese. And in that way those farmers are able to stay on their farms and continue farming and producing brilliant types of cheese and Dave mongers the cheese at the market.” 

50:00  Mongers vs Farmers: In the same fashion we have a fishmonger... Those guys do not count as farmers. They count against us, if you will allow me that language, in our farmer to non-farmer ratio... 

50:16  Interconnected: “Then you have people who are food artisans. Such as Alex Tso who makes Now Magazine’s best burger of the year for people out of our farmer, Wendy’s pork. And Kozlik’s Mustard. And supports all of the vendors at the market and brings together the produce to serve up the best possible food.”

50:50  Composition: “Forbes Wild Crafted Food are foragers who will go onto a farm and sign a contract with the farmer to explore the wild regions of the farms, the wind breaks, that conventional agriculture simply eliminates. But in these windbreaks live the foxes and rabbits and things that will help you eliminate the mice and the voles on your farm. You eliminate pesticides. Break the wind so that you don’t blow away your topsoil. Important things like this. And Jonathan Forbes and other foragers will discover nut and berry and mushroom and wild leek crops in those wild parts of the farm that allow farmers yet another low trickle of income”