Christie Pits bake oven

This wood-fired bake oven was built in 2000. Supplies were provided by the Maytree Foundation and Dufferin Grove Park. Volunteer labour was provided by city recreation staff, with community support (lunches, blueprints) from Jutta Mason, and staff support from Tino Decastro. Luis Andrade was the lead on construction. Once the working parts had been completed, Nigel Dean finished the chimney and the shingles.

Construction step-by-step picture gallery:

Current status:

This oven was used only three times in 2013. The recreation supervisor for Christie Pits assigns staff to do the burn but she does not assign staff to help with any of the food preparation or cooking. This is different than the practice at the four other city park ovens, all of which are mainly operated by city staff: Alexandra Park's oven (used by the staff of Scadding Court Community Centre), Dufferin Grove's two ovens, Edithvale oven, and Riverdale oven. Monica Gupta, of the Friends of Christie Pits, says that volunteers can't be expected to operate the oven for free anymore: too much work. Here are 2010 photos of Friday evening pizza making, on the Friends of Christie Pits website. But at this point the Christie Pits oven stays unused most of the time.

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Contacts:

Donna Densmore (community recreation programmer) <ddensmo@toronto.ca>
Monica Gupta (Friends of Christie Pits) <mongupta@hotmail.com>
Kim Brown (recreation supervisor) <kbrown2@toronto.ca>

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Content last modified on March 23, 2013, at 08:43 PM EST