Is it just me, or did summer finally hit its stride? ☀️ The evenings are stretching out, the farmers' markets are heaving, and there's honestly too much to do on a Saturday. Not complaining. 😎
This is a big week. Two of the region's best festivals land on the same weekend, 🎉there's good news in all eight of our municipalities, and downtown Whitby is closing to traffic for a proper street party.
But I want to start somewhere else: with a Port Perry crew who loaded up a converted ambulance 🚑 and drove north to Thunder Bay to look after other people's pets. It's the kind of thing that reminds you what this region is made of.
Clear your weekend. Let's get into it.
Eight municipalities, and this week every one of them had something good going on. So let's do the full lap around the Durham Eight.
🏟️ Clarington: our biggest-ever rec centre is nearly here
For a while now, the south Bowmanville site has been mostly fences and promises. That's changing fast. The new South Bowmanville Recreation Centre opens this fall with a full-size indoor soccer dome ⚽, courts for basketball 🏀, volleyball 🏐 and pickleball, a walking track 🚶🏿♀️, and an outdoor skating trail ⛸️ that doubles as a market space in the summer. First look inside is August 12, and registration opens September 2.
🔨 Whitby: a downtown block is becoming 46 homes, built by neighbours
Whitby's Mayor's Community Development Fund just passed $830,000 💰shared among about 200 local groups since 2023. One of this year's biggest grant went to Habitat for Humanity: $25,000 toward 46 affordable homes going up right in the downtown core. No developer parachuting in. Just families and volunteers with hammers ⚒️, building homes people can actually afford to live.
🤝 Scugog: 100 neighbours, a quarter-million dollars, zero red tape
Steal this idea from Port Perry. Get 100 people in a room a few times a year, everyone puts in the same amount, and the whole pot goes to a local cause that night. Eleven years on, the 100 Men of Scugog just crossed nearly $250,000 given away 💸, and signed up seven new members at their last meeting down at the Legion.
Brock Township
🔑 Brock: an empty Sunderland building is about to have front doors again
You know the look a boarded-up building brings to a small main street. Sunderland's about to get the opposite. A vacant three-storey retirement home on River Street is set to become 10 affordable apartments, three of them fully accessible on the ground floor, with a $750,000 lift from the Region.
🏡 Oshawa: 96 new homes downtown, and 25 come with a running start
Oshawa's getting 96 new affordable homes in a tower downtown. Twenty-five of them are set aside for single moms finishing school, through a program called Homeward Bound. A roof and a fresh start, at the same time.
And three quick ones to round out the eight:
🌱 Ajax: the farm growing food for the neighbours who need it
Tucked into Durham College's Ajax campus is a working urban farm: market gardens 🍅, fruit trees 🌳, a pollinator garden 🦋, even an indoor grow room, all run by students learning to grow food in the city. And every week, a good chunk of the harvest goes straight to community groups feeding people across Durham. They just had an open house, but you should pop in if you get a chance. Grow food, feed neighbours. Simple and good.
☕ Pickering: a family's chai dream opens its doors Saturday
High On Chai, a husband-and-wife café, has its grand opening this Saturday, with free chai all day, henna, and the mayor cutting the ribbon. Bonus: no tipping, and no upcharge for milk swaps. Just good chai and a warm welcome.
🚲 Uxbridge: the Trail Capital of Canada wants you on a bike
Durham's new "Shift Into Scenic" campaign is pointing cyclists 🚴🏾♂️ north, and Uxbridge is the star of it. The Experience Uxbridge Loop rolls 55 km past the L.M. Montgomery site and a couple of great farm stops. Bring water and a sense of adventure. More cycling maps and info here.
Remember those couple of smoky days last week, when the sky went hazy orange and the air-quality warnings started popping up on our phones? That smoke drifted down from the wildfires 🔥 up in north western Ontario, where thousands of people were packing up and leaving in a hurry. Down here, it was an inconvenience. Up there, whole communities were fleeing for their lives.
A little vet clinic in Port Perry sat with that and asked the question most of us didn't: wait, what happens to all the pets? 🐾
And then they just went.
Vets Around the Corner has only been open since 2024. Not even two years, and they've already been named the Port Perry’s new business of the year. But this month they did something they'd never done before. They loaded up their converted ambulance, 🚑 the mobile clinic they'd been building for house calls around Durham, and pointed it at Thunder Bay. That's a fifteen-hour drive to go help a stranger's dog.
The person behind it, William Woodstock, used to be a first responder, and it shows. His crew set out on Saturday, July 18th. Vos Independent Grocer, a local grocery store, pitched in a truck and trailer to haul the gear. By Monday they had a full field hospital running inside the Grandview Arena, treating whatever came through the doors. Then they took the ambulance even further out, to a little place called Armstrong, to gather up the pets people had been forced to leave behind, calm them down, and bring them back safe.
It's really important for us to take care of them, because at the end of the day, the animals, they take care of us.
The need up there is real. Thunder Bay's own vets are run off their feet, booked solid. More than 2,400 evacuees in the city, whole communities cleared out, several of them First Nations. And this Port Perry crew drove all that way to take some of the weight off, working with the Ontario SPCA and the Northern Reach Network to get animals into foster homes. They did it with no government funding and no promise anyone would help cover it. They just figured we would.
Let's not make them wrong about that.
We're proud these folks are ours. ❤️
If you've got a few bucks to spare, help cover the trip. They've more than earned it.
🔗 Chip in for the trip: GoFundMe · or e-transfer [email protected]
📰 Watch the report: CBC News, Thunder Bay
Know someone in Durham quietly doing good? Hit reply and point us to them. We read every single one.
A few neighbours who could use a hand this week.
🥫 The Nourish and Develop Foundation (Cannington) needs volunteers to pack orders, unload deliveries, and keep the shelves stocked. Flexible hours, start anytime, and it keeps food on tables across Brock. Sign up
🧡 Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Durham (Ajax) is looking for mentors. Not a huge commitment, just showing up for one kid, consistently. They're calling it the Golden Champion campaign. Become a mentor
Two big ones anchor the weekend.
🎪 Whitby: Home Sweet Home Festival (Sat, 10–4, free). They close the whole downtown to traffic: main stage, farmers' market, a 300-foot zipline, Bluey for the little ones, food everywhere. Details
🏴 Uxbridge: Scottish Festival, 30th year (Fri night + all day Sat, Elgin Park, free). Pipe bands, 160 Highland dancers, sheep-herding, heavy games, local craft brewers. The Mudmen kick it off Friday night. Details
And around the rest of the region:
🎬 Pickering: AFIYU's "Islands in the Sun" culture day at Esplanade Park (Sat from 2pm): Caribbean music, dance, food, and Cool Runnings after dark. Free.
🎸 Ajax: GODDO, the Canadian rock legends, a 50th-anniversary show at the Edge Lounge (Sun afternoon).
💃 Whitby: White Hot Latin Night at the Legion (Sat, 19+): lessons at 8, dancing till 1.
🎻 Oshawa: Just Us Jazz in Memorial Park (Thu Jul 30), free, food trucks.
🎶 Scugog: live music on the patio at Willowtree Farm (Sun), plus the Port Perry Lakefront Market (Sat).
🥁 Clarington: Newcastle's Concerts in the Park with Rainstone (Tue Jul 28).
A couple of new spots to try, both in Oshawa, both at 214 Ritson Rd N.
🍗 Gabby's Kitchen & Bar, the Canadian family sports-bar chain (going since 1989), just opened its 19th spot. Scratch-made pub food, wings, and every game on the screens.
🍜 Thai Room Grand, fresh Thai (Pad Thai, Massaman curry, a few Oshawa-only specials), same address, open daily.
🛶 Whitby's lakefront Visitor Centre is renting glow-in-the-dark kayaks this summer. Yes, really. Sunset paddle, sorted.
🎬 Clarington is launching a new outdoor movie series in August, Movies under the Stars, with roller skating before some of the screenings. Free.
🏫 Two new Whitby schools finally have community-picked names: Whitby Meadows and Heartwood, both opening this fall.
Duffins Creek, Ajax
There's a quiet comeback going on in Duffins Creek.
Two hundred years ago, Lake Ontario had the biggest population of Atlantic salmon on the planet. Then came the overfishing, the logging, the dams, and the pollution, and by the late 1800s they were gone from the lake. Locally extinct.
This spring, a class of Grade 6 kids from Sunderland waded into Duffins Creek in Ajax and let ninety-three baby salmon go. They'd raised them from eggs in their classroom, part of a program running in more than eighty Ontario schools. One plastic cup at a time, passed hand to hand, they tipped the fish into the current and watched them dart off.
It'll take years, and plenty of those salmon won't make it. That's not really the point. The point is a bunch of eleven-year-olds now know a river can be brought back, and that they had a hand in it. ❤️
No plan.
No permission.
They just did it.
The Port Perry vets didn't wait for a green light; they loaded up the ambulance and drove north. The 100 Men of Scugog skip the gala and hand over the cheque the same night. And a downtown Whitby block is turning into 46 homes because neighbours picked up hammers.
That's the Durham way.
See what needs doing, and do it.
Until next week.
This is Durham Life.
Be good. Do Good. ❤️
MiKe Dee
Publisher
Durham Life - Local Media that Inspires
Share Durham Life Durham Life covers Durham Region's 8 municipalities: Ajax, Brock, Clarington, Oshawa, Pickering, Scugog, Uxbridge, and Whitby.