Giveaway Day is back in Glabar Park and will take place on Saturday, June 4. This year’s event will coincide with community garage sales in the nearby neighbourhoods of Woodpark, Whitehaven and Carlingwood.

In 2021, Glabar Park’s community garage sale changed to a giveaway day to respect physical distancing guidelines and reduce in-person transactions. For 2022, residents of Glabar Park can choose to either

– leave their items at the end of their properties with a sign marked “free” (please do not obstruct sidewalks in doing so) and/or

– sell their items, as in past years, by marking prices clearly and supervising them accordingly.

Several community alliances coordinated to set this date and draw in more traffic to the area, so start assembling your items and be sure to get an early start if you’re on the hunt.

You can register your sale here.

Join neighbours and community alliance members in cleaning up Glabar Park’s public spaces.

When: Sunday, May 1, 2022*

Time: 1:00pm EST

Location: Kingsmere Park, 2074 Benjamin Avenue

*In the case of heavy rain, the event will be postponed to May 8, at the same time and place. Check back here for any postponement announcement before heading to the park.

There is no need to register for this event, but questions can be sent to glabarparkca@gmail.com.

Some things to note:

• Bags and size large plastic gloves will be provided, courtesy of the City.
• Please wear weather-appropriate clothing, and consider bringing along a reusable water bottle and a rake.
• Children under 12 are welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult.
• Sort garbage, recycle and compost (including dog feces) accordingly, and dispose of it in the corresponding receptacles.
• Leave large or unsafe items where they are found (this includes needles); an Alliance member will report them to 3-1-1.
• Leaves can be raked into piles away from park structures and fences/walls, in open spaces maintained by the City.
• Remember that the focus is on human litter only: leave other natural elements like logs and branches in place.
• Be aware of your surroundings and the potential hazards, either natural (such as poison ivy, downed branches) or human-made (broken glass, sharp metal).
• This is an outdoor event with space for physical distancing. Masking is not required, but certainly welcome.

For more information on the Cleaning the Capital program, visit Ottawa.ca.

The community rink at Kingsmere Park opened for skating today. Since it is the beginning of the season, the ice surface is a bit rough but it will get smoother over the next week. As well, the ice on the north side of the boarded rink is thin and so everyone is asked to stay away from the area marked off with caution tape for now.

Please observe physical distancing rules and see the City of Ottawa website for more details on COVID protocols for outdoor rinks. Per the latest guidance, a maximum of 25 skaters are allowed on the boarded ice at one time, and 15 on the puddle rink.

Thank you to the volunteers who worked hard in recent days to get the rink ready for the holidays!

At the Glabar Park Community Alliance Annual General Meeting on October 5th, Councillor Kavanagh announced that Glabar Park – and some adjacent neighbourhoods – would be designated as Gateway Communities. Speed limits within these communities were to be reduced sometime this fall. Signs indicating a 40 km/hr limit were installed earlier this month at every entry point into Glabar Park from Maitland, Woodroffe and Carling.  This is one more traffic calming measure being taken by the City of Ottawa to address the many complaints about speeding traffic made by residents.

City shares data from Lenester speed board

On a similar note, the Alliance recently requested data from the speed board located on Lenester, just west of Aaron.  For the year to October 19, 2021, there were over 278,000 vehicles observed.  Bearing in mind that this is only for one direction, Lenester probably had traffic of about 1,500 vehicles per day. 96% of those trips were below the old speed limit of 50 km/hr, and 56% were already travelling under the new speed limit of 40 km/hr.  The vast majority of the remaining vehicles were travelling in the 50-60 km/hr range.