Hello everyone,

This year on June 20th, the Leslieville Tree Fest returns to Leslie Grove Park for its fifth year. This year the event will be bigger and better than ever as we incorporate the 125th anniversary of Leslieville joining the city of York (Toronto).

In 1884, Leslieville was dominated by George Leslie's nursery (which supplied many of the trees for the city of York), clayworks (which supplied many of the bricks for the city), and market gardens. In a sense, Leslieville was the original "local market" for the city. It's in this spirit that we bring you the Leslieville 5th Tree Fest and 125th Anniversary. We will be celebrating all things local and natural.

In addition to a great historic walk of Leslieville in the morning, we will unveil a plaque to George Leslie in the park. During the day, we will have local entertainment, food and vendors (both farmers and goods retailers) in Leslie Grove park. There will be seminars on planting local trees and plants, creating a backyard vegetable garden, and the like. The retailers of Leslieville will be invited to join in through a sidewalk sale, and we will be inviting the restaurants to feature a locally sourced dish to entice folks to stay in the neighbourhood for dinner. There will be many more activities and surprises to come.

My purpose in writing this email is to set the stage for a great event in your minds, but also to solicit your help in recruiting volunteers to help run the event. The event is being run by the community of Leslieville for the community of Leslieville. We have a fantastic support group from Councillor Fletcher's office here to help us as well. However, we need additional help from fellow Leslievillians who would like to see this festival flourish and become an annual event.

If you, or anyone you know would be interested in volunteering to help plan the event or to assist on the 'day of', please get in touch with me at your convenience.

Looking forward to June 20th - I hope you are too.
Brian