CAO Work Party Report for May 2025
On the weekend of May 2-5, 2025, about 24 Toronto Centre member volunteers participated in the annual Spring Work Party at our E.C. Carr Astronomical Observatory (CAO) on Blue Mountain. As is usual, the planning and purchasing for this major event had started weeks before by creating and purchasing for the list of jobs, as well as arranging the food and drink for all participants. Our thanks go to Tony Horvatin, Ralph Chou and Elaine dos Santos for their efforts here.
This work party included mostly outdoor works, so the mild and dry weather was very welcome indeed. Excellent headway was made in completing the list of tasks both Saturday and on Sunday morning and very few jobs on our lists remained unaccomplished! This was a testament to the utility of assigning specific task to teams of volunteers led by our experienced work captains.
Captains this time were: Dave, Denis, Don, Jeff, Mike and Richard. Each worked diligently towards completing their assigned works and helping other teams as time permitted.
Aside from the usual spring opening and cleaning up tasks, including removing the storm windows, cleaning the house windows, preparing the mowers and cutting the lawns, distributing picnic tables, setting up the pergola tarp, spring cleaning in the observatories, and so on, there was extra cleanup this time in collecting and removing fallen tree branches from the ice storm of early April.
Each captain shepherded their team towards attending to the items on their lists. The major items included the following tasks:
- felling dead and overgrowth trees and removing the debris by trailer to our property margin along the road.
- sorting and conducting an inventory of all TC astronomy and electronic equipment on site, testing function and applying identifying stickers and entering in a database.
- distributing about 2 yards of topsoil to lawn low spots and grass seed as needed.
- constructing a snowshed to protect our new outdoor heat pump unit, dubbed ‘Bla’, in honour of Blake Nancarrow, to keep wind driven snow from packing its coils
- running power cables and wiring up two new AC power outlets
- running new CAT6 and audio cables in the house
- servicing of the THO roof hatch system and planning to replace worn hardware
- removing ice storm tree debris and gravel sprayed onto the lawn from the winter snow blowing of our parking lot.
- chemical wash and algae removal of the north deck
- Dump run to the local waste receiving site with trash and recyclables.
All these major works were completed as well as many other smaller, regular seasonal jobs too. This is the fourth work party event where a contingent of University of Toronto staff and students fully participated, eight in all. These folks are RASC TC members as well and these events make an excellent way to ‘cross pollinate’ both groups, all of whom benefit greatly from regular access to the CAO facility.
A shout out also goes to the crew that provided all our meals, baked goods, snacks and kitchen clean up. These were handily coordinated by Ralph, Elaine and Nick.
The CAO Committee would like to convey our thanks to the following RASC Toronto Centre member volunteers for giving so very generously of their time and talents to make this event yet another very successful and safe work party!
Roberto Abraham, Thomas Bernard, Steve Biggs, Jeff Booth, Hocine Boudhar, Bob Bowdler, Dave Brodie, Ralph Chou, Elaine dos Santos, Harmandeep Gill, Denis Grey, Nicholas Grey, Gaetan Godin, Tony Horvatin, Ronan Kerr, Scott Masterton, Claudio Oriani, Mike Reid, Isaac Rosenberg, Gurman Sachdeva, Richard Sewards, Steven Spinney, Don Stewart, Mike Williams, and Sandra Zhitkova.
The CAO Committee
Photos by Scott Masterton and Tony Horvatin