I went looking for Durham's good news this week and came back with eight construction projects. ð· Trail funding. A groundbreaking. A sports complex. Solid stuff, none of it wrong, all of it cold.
So I went back out. Called around, dug into the weeklies, sat in some Facebook groups I don't usually sit in. That's where the week actually was. A rugby ð player from Uxbridge just got named the best in his league on the whole continent. A woman ð§ð―from Pickering spent forty years opening her door to refugees and just got the Order of Canada for it. A guy in Bowmanville has been trying to get permission to paint ðïļ one particular wall for six years, finally got the green light, and he's doing it with his daughter.
None of that shows up if you only read press releases. You have to ask a neighbour.
That's the issue this week. Eight towns, eight people who actually did something to move the needle, and a mystery underneath a cemetery in Ajax that nobody's talking about yet.
Pour the coffee. Let's go.
ðŠĶAJAX â There's something under Potter's Field, and nobody's dug it up.
Near 25 Mill Street sits Potter's Field Cemetery, the old burial ground for people who couldn't afford a plot of their own. This month, a team from University of Toronto Scarborough rolled ground-penetrating radar across it, mapping what's below without disturbing a thing. It's the same crew that's already found more than a hundred unmarked graves ð in cemeteries across Ajax and Pickering. Nobody's dug anything up. They just finally know where to look.
Watch the video below for more info.âŽïļ
Source: U of T Magazine
Photo: TNDF - The Nourish and Develop Foundation
ð BROCK â Cannington got a battery, and it turned into a town square.
On Wednesday, August 5, a courtyard beside the old Cannington Convenience got a ribbon cutting for something nobody could quite place while it was being built. Some guessed a bathtub. One guessed a time machine. It's a 60-kilowatt battery ð that charges overnight on cheap power and runs the Nourish and Develop Foundation's food bank buildings all day for less. The old gazebo it replaced had uneven grass a wheelchair couldn't cross. The new square is fully accessible, with gardens, seating, and free charging for anyone who stops by. An electric wheelchair ðĶž user got rolling again there after running out of juice.
ðū CLARINGTON â A woman who walked the neighbours' dogs as a kid now runs a national dog show.
Morgan Jarvis grew up in Bowmanville without a dog ð of her own, so she walked everyone else's. She and her husband Brian O'Connor now run K9 Central on seven and a half acres on Holt Road, and this summer Bell aired a four-part documentary about them called âWe Owe It to the Dogs.â Her flyball team won the national title last year.
Watch the video below for more info.âŽïļ
Source: Clarington This Week
Photo: Women of Colour Hockey Collective
ð OSHAWA â There's no ice in Jamaica, so she brought hockey anyway.
Saroya Tinker grew up in Oshawa, played for Team Canada ð, and now works for the PWHL. Last month she flew a dozen players, including an Olympian, to Kingston, Jamaica, and taught more than sixty kids to play hockey ð with a ball instead of a puck, since the island has no ice at all. Another Oshawa guy, Zechariah Thomas, sent about twenty thousand dollars in sticks to make it happen.
Photo: Matthew House Toronto
ðïļ PICKERING â Forty years of opening her door just earned her the country's highest honour.
Anne Woolger has lived in Pickering for decades. In June, the Governor General made her a Member of the Order of Canada ð for founding Matthew House Toronto, which has taken in more than five thousand refugee claimants since she started it. She was the only person in Durham Region on the list. Mayor Kevin Ashe drove over to her house himself to say congratulations.
Source: Matthew House Toronto · Governor General of Canada
Photo: Scugog Fire Department
ð SCUGOG â A firefighter's air pack just got an upgrade that could save his life.
On Tuesday, August 18, Scugog Fire ð brought in three rapid-intervention air packs, the kind that keep a firefighter breathing if they're trapped inside a burning building. A local Firehouse Subs location covered it with a $25,519 grant. Fire Chief ð Mike Matthews says it's the difference between waiting and acting.
Photo: Major League Rugby
ð UXBRIDGE â A kid from Uxbridge Secondary just became the best rugby player on the continent.
Brock Webster went to high school in Uxbridge. This summer, Major League Rugby named him ð Player of the Year, the first Canadian to ever win it. His team, the Chicago Hounds, went twelve and oh, the first perfect season the league has ever had, and Webster's won back-to-back championships with two different clubs.
Source: Major League Rugby · The Standard
Photo: Whitby Art Studio
ðĻ WHITBY â They packed art kits by hand and drove them to kids' houses during lockdown.
Marc and Deanna Walsh have run Whitby Art Studio ðĻ on Taunton Road for twelve years. Deanna left a design career in Toronto to do it. When the pandemic shut everything down, they hunted for scarce art supplies, built personal kits, and delivered them door to door so classes could keep going. âWe knew this was our forever home,â Marc says. âIf we were going to start a business, it had to be here.â
Source: Whitby Art Studio · Region of Durham
ðïļ Chad Tyson has been trying to paint one wall for six years. He finally got the yes.
Chad Tyson isn't new to this. He's spent twenty-three years painting ðïļ murals across Durham Region, opened The Paint Factory in Oshawa, and helped bring the region's first legal graffiti walls to life. But the parking lot across from 99 King in downtown Bowmanville is one he's wanted for six years, and permission only just came through.
He's doing it with his daughter, Cadence. âShe's awesome,â he says. It's completely self-funded, every can of paint and every brush out of his own pocket, and he's a month in.
The spot he's painting sits right in the stretch of downtown Bowmanville the fire tore through last year. 99 King, the restaurant across from the wall, stayed open all night that night so people who'd just lost their homes had somewhere warm to sit. Tyson's mural is his answer to that: something to look at instead of a scarred parking lot, a reason to park, walk, and spend a few dollars downtown again.
He's not asking for much. A share, a wave, a few dollars if you've got them.
Chip in: gofund.me/17df20575
Sources: Chad Tyson · Durham Radio News
ð· Jack Hurst calls himself Chief Shoveller. He needs help shovelling.
Jack Hurst used to be an executive at Pepsi Canada. Now he and his wife Rita run Pegasus Animal Sanctuary on a hundred acres near Port Perry, home to rescued pigs, cows, donkeys, and miniature horses. His whole crew went back to school this month, so he's short five to ten volunteers, minimum eight months, a couple hours a shift, high school volunteer hours signed on the spot.
If you've got a Tuesday morning free and don't mind a bit of mud, he'd love to hear from you.
Reach Jack: 647-292-1700 or pegasussanctuary.com
Doors: Pegasus Animal Sanctuary · Durham Radio News
ð· Friday, Aug 28 â Ferrport Jazz Ensemble, Old Flame Brewing, Port Perry. 7 to 10pm, 135 Perry Street. Ferrport's a Port Perry band, jazz and pop standards done their own way. Free to walk in, grab a pint.
Doors: Ferrport Jazz Ensemble · Old Flame Brewing Co.
ð Saturday, Aug 29 â Canadian Black Literary Festival, Ajax. The first one ever held here. Free book fair, noon to 5pm, McLean Community Centre. The evening showcase runs 7 to 10pm at the St. Francis Centre, tickets $15, with Ontario Poet Laureate Testament and CBC's Antonio Michael Downing hosting.
Sources: BlackLit Durham · byblacks.com
ð Saturday, Aug 29 â Kendal Summer Market, Kendal Orange Lodge. 10am to 4pm, 15 Kendal Church Street. First-time market, local vendors, baking, specialty lemonade, free to get in.
ð Monday, Aug 31 â The Burrow, Cork & Bean, Oshawa. Every Monday from here on, 6:30 to 8:30pm, downstairs at 8 Simcoe Street North. A new play-reading group, drop in, all levels welcome, free. Run by Oetta Geraghty with Durham Shoestring Performers.
Sources: · Durham Shoestring Performers
ðĪ Ajax's Kirill Kulaev just won a $12,000 robotics scholarship into Ontario Tech. Three years on his school's team, two provincial finals. (ontariotechu.ca)
ðū Free tennis and soccer for girls, ages 6 to 13, launching in Clarington. Registration opens Wednesday, Sept 2 at 7am. (clarington.net/HerGameOurGoal)
ð Whitby's new $154-million Fieldgate Sports Complex in Brooklin opens to the public Saturday, Sept 12. Twin arenas, a competition pool, and it's free to walk in. (whitby.ca)
ðķ Ajax landed $3.39 million in federal funding to build a new stretch of the Trans Canada Trail, connecting the Crestpoint Lands. (durhampost.ca)
ðïļ A 23-acre lot in downtown Oshawa, empty since 1987, broke ground this week on 502 new rental homes. (constructconnect.com)
ðŠ Fall fair season starts soon: Port Perry, Saturday Sept 5 to Monday Sept 7. Uxbridge, Friday Sept 11 to Sunday Sept 13. Sunderland, Tuesday Sept 15 and Wednesday Sept 16. Beaverton, Friday Sept 18 and Saturday Sept 19.
ðģ The old Bowmanville Zoo is a park now, and it's actually usable.
Fourteen hectares of the former Bowmanville Zoo lands opened as a public park this week. The old gazebo that used to sit there, surrounded by uneven grass and narrow paths, is gone. In its place: a four-metre-wide asphalt trail you could take a wheelchair or a stroller down without a problem, plus quieter crushed-limestone paths branching off it, all running about seven hundred metres along Soper Creek. There's armour stone along the water, hundreds of newly planted trees, and benches spaced out for anyone who wants to sit a while.
It's phase one of a master plan Clarington approved back in 2024, funded partly by an $80,000 community benefit contribution from Hydro One. Future phases could bring a welcome centre, natural play areas for kids, and an outdoor amphitheatre.
Mayor Adrian Foster and Valleys 2000 president Kim Maxwell were both there for the opening. Get in from Mearns Park to the north, or park along King Street East and come in from the south.
Doors: Municipality of Clarington · Durham Post
â― Gord Lowery mowed the soccer pitches himself. Nobody asked him to.
Source: Durham Post · durhamregion.com
Gord Lowery of Orono died on July 23 at 96. Around town, people called him Mr. Soccer. He helped build the Orono Arena and Community Centre back in 1979 and stuck with it for decades after, showing up to watch games at every age level, mowing the pitches when they needed mowing, doing the small unglamorous jobs a community needs someone to do without being asked twice. Clarington named him Senior of the Year in 2013. Before he died, the Orono Amateur Athletic Association had already named a hockey tournament after him, the Gord Lowery Classic, which runs again this December.
âA champion, a friend, and an inspiration,â is how Mayor Adrian Foster put it.
It's why Chad Tyson is out painting a wall in Bowmanville on his own dime. It's why Jack Hurst mucks out stalls near Port Perry every morning. It's why a firefighter in Scugog gets to breathe a little easier this month, and why a battery in Cannington turned into a place where kids run their own little markets. None of it makes the news on its own. But it all adds up to a place worth living in.
Until next week.
This is Durham Life.
Be good. Do Good. âĪïļ
MiKe Dee
Publisher
Durham Life - Local Media that Inspires
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Durham Life covers Durham Region's 8 municipalities:
Ajax, Brock, Clarington, Oshawa, Pickering, Scugog, Uxbridge, and Whitby.