Fiesta Week launches on Sunday, June 21 and continues all week at various pavillions.
Hello friends 👋🏽,
This Sunday is doing a lot of work. June 21 is Father's Day 👨, National Indigenous Peoples Day, and the summer solstice ☀️ all at once, which makes it the longest, fullest day of the year in more ways than one.
The weekend around it is just as busy. Oshawa's Fiesta Week fires up downtown, North Durham Pride brings a country festival to Port Perry, and the Orono pool opens its gates for a free weekend. There is, in short, no good reason to stay inside.
This week we also meet a Changemaker bringing Pride to small-town Durham, two new places worth your time, and a small brown bird called the chimney swift (no relation to Taylor!) that just got a brand-new home in Oshawa.
Pour the coffee. ☕ Let's go.
Each week, the most important civic and community news from across Durham Region's eight municipalities, curated in one place.
This week across the region.
🏛️ Pickering opened its first new community centre in decades. The Dorsay Community and Heritage Centre is now open, and it folds three things into one roof: a community centre, a museum, and a library. For a city that has not built a new community centre in a generation, it is a genuinely big day. Details at pickering.ca.
Source: City of Pickering • Durham Radio News
🤪 The Township of Scugog is running its Free Park and Play program again this summer for kids aged 4 to 12. Camp leaders set up at local parks with free games, sports, and crafts, no registration and no cost. It is the kind of low-key, drop-by-on-a-whim summer that is getting rarer. More at scugog.ca.
Source: Township of Scugog
⚽ Ajax renamed a downtown square for one of its own. For the World Cup, the town is temporarily renaming Pat Bayly Square to Derek Cornelius Square, after the Team Canada defender who grew up in Ajax and started out with the Ajax Soccer Club. The unveiling is Thursday, June 18 at 5:30pm, right before the 6pm Fan Zone watch party as Canada plays Qatar.
Source: Durham Radio News · Town of Ajax
Oak Valley Health scheduling clerk Darlene Kirk; patient care director Sandi Lofgren; patient care manager Christine McGilvray and manager of facilities, support and heliport Mike Cabral gather at the new Pride crosswalk at Uxbridge Hospital. (Oak Valley Health photo)
In Uxbridge, Oak Valley Health unveiled a permanent Pride walkway at the main entrance of Uxbridge Hospital, designed to stay year-round. "A rainbow crosswalk can signal that 2SLGBTQIA+ people are welcome, respected and safe every day of the year, not just during June," said the hospital's chief nursing executive. Inclusion as architecture, not a seasonal coat of paint.
Source: durhamregion.com · Oak Valley Health
🏥 Clarington is moving ahead on a new four-storey medical clinic next to Lakeridge Health's Bowmanville hospital, part of a plan to grow a full medical campus along King Street as the hospital itself expands. More doctors, labs, and pharmacies, closer to home. Details at clarington.net.
Source: INsauga · Municipality of Clarington
Also this week across the Eight
⚡ Oshawa & region: The province picked Durham for a new small modular reactor manufacturing plant, with parts headed to Europe and a fresh wave of skilled jobs. Durham Radio News →
🎓 Region: Ontario is investing over $240 million into Durham College and Ontario Tech University. durhamcollege.ca →
🏄♂️ Whitby: All Durham public beaches are open and testing safe for swimming, just in time for the heat. durhamregion.com →
Paradise Beach, Ajax.
Each week's Changemaker is a Durham Region neighbour who decided not to wait. They show the rest of us what's possible, and what's already being done. They are the change.
All it took was one neighbour's flag.
When Mikey Galita and his partner moved to Greenbank, he was quietly bracing himself. He'd grown up in Markham and found his people as a teen in Toronto's queer community, and a small fear came along for the move to a rural town: would he be accepted out here?
Then, on moving day, he spotted a neighbour flying a Pride flag. "That just totally calmed our nerves," he says. "We felt at ease to enjoy our community without fear. It's those little things that really make a difference for anybody who lives in remote or rural areas."
That one small signal turned into a mission. Galita started helping Greenbank United Church, a local affirming congregation, with community outreach, and in early 2023 he helped found North Durham Pride, which he chairs today. Its whole premise is that warm, joyful queer communities don't only exist in big cities, they're alive in small towns too, you just have to make them visible.
This Saturday, that belief takes over Port Perry. North Durham Pride's first-ever Country Festival brings a parade, live music, drag, family games, and yes, a mechanical bull to Palmer Park, with a share of the proceeds going to the Port Perry Hospital Foundation. (Full details up in Happening This Week.)
"It's a safe environment for everybody to enjoy without fear of being judged. You don't have to be queer, you don't have to be anything, you can just be part of the community."
Mikey Galita
North Durham Pride
For Galita, it was never really about the party. It's about permission. "What I want people to take away," he says, "is to be authentic, and don't be afraid to be visible."
Read more at durhamregion.com, or find the weekend's events at northdurhampride.ca.
Know a Durham Region Changemaker? Hit reply.
Want to be the change? Durham needs you.
📞 Telephone Reassurance. A Durham program needs warm, friendly callers to phone a senior or isolated neighbour once a week, just to talk and ease the quiet. It's flexible, done from your own phone, and there's a waitlist of people hoping for a call. Apply →
🐈 Abbey Cats Adoptions. A Durham cat rescue needs volunteer adoption counsellors to screen would-be adopters by phone and email, about 4 to 8 hours a week, all from home. Training provided. Apply →
Run a Durham group that needs hands? Hit reply and we'll put the word out.
A weekend with no excuses.
🎉 Oshawa Fiesta · Oshawa
A free street festival Sunday June 21, noon to 5pm, in Memorial Park and along Centre Street, kicking off a 50-year tradition. Fourteen cultural pavilions follow June 22 to 27, including the first-ever Indian pavilion. Details →
🏳️🌈 North Durham Pride Country Festival · Port Perry
Saturday June 20, a full day in Port Perry, and the centrepiece of North Durham's 2026 Pride season across Scugog, Uxbridge, and Brock. northdurhampride.ca →
🪶 National Indigenous Peoples Day · Region-wide
Sunday June 21. The Oshawa Museum hosts an Indigenous Peoples Day celebration, one of several ways across Durham to learn, listen, and take part.
🏊 Orono Park Pool Opening Weekend · Clarington
Free swims June 20 and 21, noon to 4pm, before the pool opens daily on June 26. A cool place to land on a hot solstice weekend. Details →
🎣 Free Fishing for Father's Day · Region-wide
It's one of Ontario's licence-free fishing weekends, so you can take Dad (or yourself) to the water this Father's Day without a permit. Lake Ontario, the creeks, and conservation-area ponds are all fair game.
New in the neighbourhood.
🍔 Talk of the Town · Bowmanville →
The burger-and-fried-chicken favourite lost its downtown home to last year's Bowmanville fire. After a long road back, owner Zach Munro has reopened inside Markets at 62 King St. W. The regulars have already found it.
🤸 In8 Parkour Gym · Ajax →
Durham's first dedicated parkour gym, at 5-539 Westney Rd. S., open to all ages and skill levels with drop-ins, classes, and even a free intro lesson. Founder Devin Stavert grew up training all over the region and finally built the space he was always looking for.
The week in good news.
🎟️ A very good day in Whitby. A Whitby woman won $1 million on Lotto 6/49 and says she plans to retire. We'll allow it.
🚓 Calling all Grade 5s. Durham police reopened their annual Police Chief for a Day contest, where one student steps into the chief's shoes. A bright, civic-minded kid you know might be perfect.
🚌 Heads up for July. Durham Region Transit fares go up July 1, and specialized-service booking is expanding to the app. Worth knowing before the change lands.
Chimney Swifts entering a chimney | Photo: Peter Middleton | Birds Canada
Oshawa built a chimney for the birds. Just the birds.
South Oshawa residents did a double-take at the future site of the new GO station: a tall brick chimney standing on its own, attached to no building at all. It is not a mistake. Metrolinx built it on purpose, for the birds.
The old Knob Hill Farms building at 500 Howard St. is coming down to make way for the station, and it was home to chimney swifts, a small brown bird that can only cling to vertical walls and so nests inside hollow things like dead trees and old chimneys. Bird-lovers call them "cigars with wings." Their numbers are falling, partly because modern chimneys come capped and the insects they eat are thinning out.
Adult Chimney Swift with its young | Photo: George Peck | Birds Canada
So before the wrecking ball, Metrolinx put up a standalone chimney to hand the swifts back a home. One naturalist who watches for them locally called it a wonderful thing: "Every place that a pair can nest would be a wonderful thing."
If you want to look for them yourself, dusk is the hour, and Durham's conservation lands are the place. The chimney swift is a species at risk that shelters on CLOCA-protected ground from Lynde Shores in Whitby to Purple Woods in Oshawa.
Source: durhamregion.com
There's a lovely alignment in this Sunday's calendar. Father's Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day, and the longest day of the year, all landing together. Three different ways of saying the same thing: pay attention to where you come from, and to the people who make you feel you belong.
Mikey Galita felt it in a neighbour's Pride flag on moving day. A Metrolinx crew said it with a chimney built for a bird most of us never notice. The pavilion volunteers downtown will say it with their grandmothers' recipes. None of it is loud. All of it is belonging.
So spend the long day well this weekend. Call your dad, learn something new, and stay out until the late sun finally goes down.
Until next week.
This is Durham Life.
Be good. Do good.
MiKe Dee
Publisher
Durham Life - Local Media that Inspires
Share Durham Life
Know someone who loves discovering good things happening around Durham?
Forward this newsletter to them and invite them to subscribe.Covering Durham Region's 8 municipalities: Ajax · Brock · Clarington · Oshawa · Pickering · Scugog · Uxbridge · Whitby