🍖 Opening night at Ribfest: the smoke, the midway lights, and the first rack off the grill.
Hello friends,
A warm hello and a grateful thank you ❤️ to the few hundred of you who just joined us. You picked a heck of a weekend to land in the inbox.
The Region is stacked this week. Ribfest is back in Bowmanville after a year away, hometown country star Robyn Ottolini headlines Springtide in Uxbridge, and Canada plays its first home World Cup match with watch parties in Whitby and Ajax. That is a full Saturday before you even get to everything else.
We have also got a fresh Durham Eight, a Changemaker who built a whole community out of her own hard landing in Canada, a couple of new places worth a visit, a curbside treasure hunt you can do in your pajamas, and a rare white raccoon you have to see to believe. 🦝
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.
♻️ Your driveway becomes a free store on Saturday. Durham's Curbside Giveaway Day is back this Saturday, June 13, from 7am to 7pm. Put your unwanted but still-usable things at the curb, label them free, and let your neighbours give them a second life. Whatever nobody takes by evening comes back in. It is the rare clean-out that costs nothing and clears the garage at the same time. Full how-to at durham.ca.
Source: Durham Radio News · Region of Durham
💛 Clarington's first hospice filled up faster than anyone expected. Marigold Hospice in Newcastle opened last October, and it has already reached capacity four times. Most hospices take six to nine months to fill their beds. Marigold did it in a matter of weeks, carried by a community that keeps showing up and the $800,000 to $900,000 a year in donations it takes to keep the doors open. This month Clarington council handed over a half-acre next door, so the families who visit finally have somewhere to park.
Source: durhamregion.com · Marigold Hospice Care
🍎 When school lets out, the lunch line shouldn't disappear. For a lot of Durham kids, the school nutrition program is the part of the day they can count on. The Durham District School Board and the Ignite Durham Learning Foundation are trying to carry that through the summer with the Ignite Summer campaign, funding healthy snacks, meals, and grocery support while class is out. A survey of 119 local schools found some serve up to 700 students a day. You can pitch in at idlf.ca.
Source: durhamregion.com
🌳 Uxbridge's provincial park just grew by 12 football fields. The province is adding 23 acres to Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park, the first urban provincial park in Ontario and the pride of a township that calls itself the Trail Capital of Canada. The land came from Metrolinx, and it is part of a three-year, $19-million investment that will bring new trails and parking. The park already runs 16 kilometres of trail, and it is launching its own collectible crest to mark the expansion.
Source: durhamregion.com
Also This Week Across The Eight
🩺 Pickering-Ajax: The Province formalized a $3.79M to provide family doctors for 10,000 patients. Recruiting for doctors is being driven by Docs for Durham, an initiative funded by the Region. durhamregion.com
📚 Whitby: The Whitby Public Library holds its first-ever book sale this Saturday. Bring a tote and a little self-control. whitbylibrary.ca
💼 Ajax: A new Geodis logistics centre opened in Ajax, a hub for Milwaukee Tool expected to bring around 100 full-time jobs. Durham Post
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.
The Ajax mom who decided no one should arrive alone.
When Kristina McPherson moved to Canada, the brochure version and the real version turned out to be two different things. Her visa was rejected once before she even arrived. When she finally landed, she went from her aunt's place in Milton to a job in Ajax, and the loneliness hit harder than she expected. "Immigration is coated in this paint of opportunity," she says. "To some extent, it is traumatic."
Most people would file that under hard-won personal experience and move on. Kristina built something with it.
In 2019 she started As Told By Canadian Immigrants, a media platform and YouTube channel that captures the real stories of building a life in a new country. The throughline of all of it is simple: community is the remedy. "The isolation can make you feel like you're the only one," she says. "But once you find that other international student, that other work-permit holder, it's like, oh my gosh, you too?"
This spring she launched a new series, Mom-Versations, produced in a studio at Durham College. It focuses on immigrant mothers and the things nobody warns you about: caregiving, career pivots, money stress, family separation, and what happens when the village you grew up with does not make the trip with you.
Her goal now is a bigger platform and live studio shows with a community audience, hosted somewhere here in Durham. The whole point was never the camera. It was the room full of people realizing they were never as alone as they felt.
For more info, visit her channel on YouTube As Told By Canadian Immigrants.
Know a Durham Region Changemaker? Hit reply.
Want to be the change? Durham needs you.
🏳️🌈 North Durham Pride. Volunteers of all ages are wanted for the 2026 Pride season across Scugog, Uxbridge, and Brock. Get involved · the story
Run a Durham group that needs hands? Hit reply and we'll put the word out.
Three festivals, one weekend, zero excuses.
🎤 Springtide Music Festival · Uxbridge — June 11 to 13. Hometown country star Robyn Ottolini headlines Friday, June 12, at Second Wedge Brewery, back on the stage where she got her start. springtidemusicfestival.com
🍖 Bowmanville Ribfest · Clarington — June 12 to 14 at the Garnet B. Rickard Complex, back after a year away. Ribbers, live music, a midway, and a kids' carnival, all for $2 a person or $5 a family. A youth-led crew is also collecting boxed mac and cheese on site for a Guinness record attempt that feeds Feed the Need Durham.
⚽ World Cup Watch Parties · Whitby & Ajax — Canada plays its first home match Friday, June 12. Whitby hosts a family party at Civic Park (2 to 6pm, kickoff at 3, on a giant inflatable screen), and Ajax opens its Fan Zone at the Audley Recreation Centre (2 to 7pm) with food and entertainment. Bring a lawn chair. DurhamRegion.com
👠 Walk a Mile in Her Shoes · Bowmanville — Saturday, June 13, 10am to noon at Rotary Park. A light-hearted walk with a serious purpose, raising money for Bethesda House and the women and children it shelters from violence. Yes, some folks do it in red heels. Durham Post
🚲 Bike Month Scavenger Hunt · Oshawa — Tuesday, June 16, 5:30 to 7:30pm. June is Bike Month, and the city is running a scavenger hunt on two wheels along the Waterfront Trail. Meet at Lakeview Park, Parking Lot G (1557 Kluane Ave.), bring a helmet, and go chase down the clues. Free, and our kind of Tuesday. oshawa.ca
New in the neighbourhood.
🍵 DAVIDsTEA · Oshawa Centre — The tea shop is back in Durham after years away, and it landed in Oshawa by popular request. The new spot has the full loose-leaf lineup plus a Tea Bar with lemonades and an organic matcha menu. "Oshawa asked us to come back," the company's CEO said.
🍺 Town Brewery Beer Garden · Ajax Waterfront — Ajax is getting a lakeside beer garden for the summer. Town Brewery's pop-up lands near Paradise Park, with a licensed patio plus food and non-alcoholic options, so the whole family can come down to the water. It is a pilot run this year, opening around July 1.
The week in good news.
🚴 Cold, rain, and $304,000 raised anyway. More than 400 cyclists rode through miserable weather at Ajax Downs for the Ride for the 'Ridge and pulled in over $304,000 for Lakeridge Health, money that buys the equipment provincial funding does not. durhamregion.com
Channon Oyenira, second from right, this year’s winner of the Madiba Award, receives the award from 2025’s winner, Gloria Small-Clarke, second from left, as Patrice Gustave, left, and Esther Forde, right, watch on. The Madiba Gala was held in late May in Ajax.
Steven Frank photo
🏆 Black excellence, honoured in Ajax. Historian and educator Channon Oyeniran received this year's Madiba Award, which recognizes a Durham leader of African ancestry whose work reflects Nelson Mandela's values. durhamregion.com
🐕 A new place for the dogs to run. Clarington is planning an off-leash dog park at Guildwood Park in north Bowmanville, possibly built late this summer alongside the splash pad. durhampost.ca
A one-in-a-thousand raccoon, and the crew that works our streets.
You may have seen the photo going around: a baby raccoon, nearly pure white, blinking out from a litter under a porch. It is leucistic, a rare genetic quirk that strips most of the pigment from the fur while leaving the eyes their normal colour. Most wildlife technicians go an entire career without seeing one.
The find happened just west of us in Aurora, but the crew behind it, Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control, also covers Durham, serving Oshawa, Ajax, Pickering, Whitby, and Bowmanville. They lifted the deck boards, guided every baby out by hand, and set the litter in a reunion box so the mother could move them to a backup den. Everybody walked away. Durham Post has the full rescue, photos and all.
It is baby season across Durham right now, which is exactly when raccoons, skunks, and squirrels slip into decks, attics, and chimneys to raise their young. If you hear scratching overhead, the humane move is not to trap and dump. Ontario law bars relocating wildlife more than a kilometre from home, and a trapped mother usually leaves hidden babies behind. The kinder path is to wait out the season, or call a crew that reunites families and seals the way in once everyone is out.
If you would rather admire the wild from a polite distance, Durham makes that easy. Second Marsh in Oshawa is the largest wetland left in the GTA, with more than 300 species moving through. McLaughlin Bay and Darlington pull in the rare and migratory birds. And Lynde Shores in Whitby is the one where the chickadees will land right on your open hand.
Photo courtesy Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control · Oshawa
Three festivals in one weekend is the kind of problem we like having. It says something about a place when the calendar gets crowded with ribs, live music, and a whole region painting its face for a soccer match.
None of these weekends just happen, though. A Rotary Club spent months rebuilding Ribfest after it lost its old home. A hometown singer keeps coming back to the brewery stage that gave her a start. Volunteers will spend Saturday morning in red heels to keep a shelter's doors open. The fun is the easy part. Someone always did the quiet work first.
So get out there this weekend. Eat the ribs, sing along, and say thanks to whoever is running the booth.
Until next week…
This is Durham Life!
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MiKe Dee
Publisher
Durham Life - Local Media that Inspires
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Covering Durham Region's 8 municipalities:
Ajax · Brock · Clarington · Oshawa · Pickering · Scugog · Uxbridge · Whitby