Last month, the ladies of the Rosewood Women’s Wellness Group enjoyed a delightful trip to Evergreen Brickworks, where nature and creativity beautifully come together. It was an afternoon filled with rejuvenation and new connections, in a vibrant community setting. Nestled in the scenic Don Valley, the Brickworks offered picturesque trails for exploration, along with meaningful conversations over tea and delicious homemade snacks at the Picnic Café.
Photo from the trail – credit to Sandra
Our upcoming adventures include a visit to Toogood Pond Park and Main Street Unionville, a holiday concert by the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra at the Salvation Army Citadel, and a celebratory Holiday lunch at the Queen Victoria Pub. Additionally, the Rosewood Women’s Wellness Group will be collecting items to donate to the Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre to support Inuit families living in Nunavut.
Please download a PDF copy of the Fall 2024 Scarborough Rosewood Community Association’s newsletter here:
If you live in the area, you should soon receive a physical copy in your mailbox. If you find you are not receiving our mail, please check any “no junk mail” signs you may have, and also consider volunteering to help with distribution (we need more delivery people!)
While digging through the old Rosewood Taxpayers’ Association newsletters, photos and documents, we came across some old maps someone had previously obtained from the Scarborough Archives. Here they are, because I can’t be the only one curious and interested in what Rosewood was like 100 years ago.
This first is simply a close-up. The white and red dots marked the boundaries of what we now know as Rosewood, though the street names are unclear.
Here is the 1878 full Scarboro map, showing the boundaries of Scarborough from Lake Ontario to the south and Markham to the north.
Oops, I seem to have missed the one from 1910. But here we are in 1932.
Finally, this is an old map of modern day Rosewood. If you joined us on community clean-ups in past decades you may have received one of these in order to complete your rounds.
If this is something that interests you and you would like to help us compile a more complete history of the area, please comment here or contact us. The next Rosewood AGM will be held on October 15, 2024 from 7-9pm at Alexmuir Junior Public School. Come say hi!
This September we were able to partner with our local elementary schools and have some of their students visit our gardens. The students did some planting and winter sowing of native plants, in the process learning about native plants and their importance in saving our pollinator friends.
We also received a very generous donation of tree stumps and mulch from Birch Cliff Tree Care, providing some additional mulching, habitat and seating.
We held our first book club meeting on September 12th. The ladies gathered to discuss the novel “How to Bury Your Husband” by Alexia Casale. The novel takes place in the UK, so we gathered around the dining room table with our fascinators and enjoyed refreshments while discussing the novel.
It was the first time any of us have read a novel by Alexia Casale but it will not be the last. The topic was compelling and the author quickly drew us in. The women in the novel came from varying backgrounds and developed a close bond through each of their tragedies. It demonstrated their strength and a will to move forward in their lives. We found ourselves feeling compassion for the four women in each of their difficult situations, and an unlikely ally surprised us all.
What was the difficult situation? Who is the unlikely ally? You will have to read for yourself to find the answers to these and many more questions.
Some of the book club ladies with their fascinators and book!
Our next read will be “Crosshairs” by James Patterson. We’re looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts on this one!
Our book club, Rosewood Reads, was launched the first week of August. The book club is headed by our very own Lisa B. The group will read one book a month, and meet once a month on a Friday evening to discuss the book. The first book we will be reading has an interesting title and an equally interesting plot: The Best Way to Bury Your Husband by Alexia Casale
Readers can choose any format to enjoy the book(e-copy, print or audio). This is a fun way to read books, get to know more people in the community, take a break from our regular routines, dive into great discussions, open up our worlds, discover new authors and stories, and have a laugh too! This is a safe, non- judgmental environment in which to enjoy good discussions, you don’t have to be a bookworm to join, and language is not a barrier.
Who we are: The Rosewood Women’s Wellness Group was established in July 2023. It is a volunteer led, grassroots organization for women of all ages, cultures and backgrounds in the neighbourhood of Rosewood. Our membership has grown from 7 to 40 women in the last year. The Rosewood Women’s Wellness Group is a proud recipient of the certificate of recognition, from Councillor Jamaal Myers, for outstanding contributions to the well-being of the community.
What we do: We organize activities that strengthen the support network of women in Rosewood and increase their circle of friends. Our activities focus on the mental, physical and social well-being of women.
Our Activities: So far, we have been on hikes in the Rouge Urban National Park, bowling, visited the Aga Khan Museum, had a Mother’s Day Celebration Lunch, organized a weekly walking group, had a Christmas Potluck, collected donations of care packages for a local women’s shelter, participated in the community clean up and gardening activities in the Rosewood Community Gardens, and attended webinars and workshops on mental health organised by the Scarborough Women’s Centre. We are launching a book club for the Rosewood Community in the in the Fall and planning to do much more!
If you would like to join the Rosewood Women’s Wellness Group or need more information, please email us at: Rosewoodwellness2023@outlook.com
Who we are: The Rosewood Pollinator Garden Group was established in September 2023. Our group of 25 gardeners are from the Rosewood Community. They are of different ages, cultures and backgrounds. While our group has expert and novice gardeners, we all learn from each other. We also offer volunteer hours to high school students and will involve local elementary schools to engage students in creating pollinator friendly gardens. The Rosewood Pollinator Garden Group is a proud recipient of the Certificate of Recognition, presented by Councillor Jamaal Myers, for outstanding contributions to the community.
What we do: Our main goal is to rehabilitate the Rosewood Community Gardens. These are located on the Northeast and Northwest corners of the intersection at Alexmuir Boulevard and Finch Avenue East. We are creating pollinator-friendly gardens to help preserve and increase the population of pollinators in our city. Some of the pollinators that we are trying to help are butterflies, bees, moths and birds.
the Rosewood gardens before the update
What we are growing in the community gardens: Most of the plants that we are growing are native to Canada. These include, Serviceberry trees, Black-eyed Susans, Echinacea, Golden Rod, Bee Balm, Sunflowers and Butterfly Milkweed. Native plants provide pollinators with food, nectar and nesting sites.
If you would like to join our group or need more information, please email us at: rosewoodpollinators@gmail.com
Our Proud Partners and Sponsors We are grateful to the following partners and sponsors for helping us to create our beautiful community gardens: – Scarborough Rosewood Community Association – Canadian Tire, Agincourt – Birchcliff Treecare: https://birchclifftreecare.com/ – Pollinate TO – Cliffcrest Butterflyway, A David Suzuki Foundation Community Project: https://www.cliffcrestbutterflyway.com/
As the weather turns, our gardening activities turn to raking leaves, cleaning up our flower beds and over-wintering our gardens for the cold weather. This last month has seen a great deal of construction in our neighbourhood. Thank you to all of our residents for continuing to drive considerately and carefully through our streets, making sure that all our road users are safe.
We’re so excited as a neighbourhood association to be slowly re-vamping our activities, starting this summer with our Movie Night in the Park (so many of you came out to watch and it was so much fun!) and the fall Community Clean-Up. Our local gardeners and gardeners-in-training have also begun to meet, to look at cleaning up our Rosewood gardens and planning for next spring. It’s possible Spring 2024 will see the return of our door-to-door canvassing for SRCA’s $5/year membership fee, and we look forward to being able to do even more with the increase in funding.
Do you have ideas? Want to come out and volunteer in our gardens for some social time and exercise? Hand out (or design!) a newsletter? Let us know, and for timely updates, subscribe to our email newsletter using the link at the bottom of this website.
Scarborough Rosewood Community Association 