How a nest of duck eggs hatched an idea,
Toronto vice-principal launches naming contest for 11 ducklings in yard
Meet Pond, James Pond — and also newly named family members Quackie Chan, Duck Norris, Quack Sparrow, Ducktape, Quack Attack, Eggspresso, Goose, Quacked Jack, Sir Quacks-A-Lot, Moby Duck and Michael Quackson.
They started out as11light blue eggs in a nest that educator Robert Gallo discovered in his Etobicoke backyard after seeing a female mallard duck fly out of a tree. That hatched an idea: Why not start a contest for students to name the duck family, providing teens a little fun while cooped up at home during the pandemic?
“I had 100 submissions within the first day,” said Gallo, who is a vice-principal and new to Toronto Catholic high school Dante Alighieri Academy.
Gallo said he’s a “big fan of play on words,” so in the end he chose the submissions from Grade 12 student Massimo Calabro. The 18-year-old saw the contest on Instagram and “thought I might give it a shot.” He came up with his ideas “from watching movies, and I just remembered some names and went through actors’ names to see if I could make a duck name out of it,” he said.
“It was fun,” said Calabro, who was awarded a $50 Amazon gift card for his creative efforts. “It gave me a little laugh while I was doing it, too. It’s a little boring being at home all the time … it makes your day a little better.”
Gallo’s own two-year-old son, Nathan, was excited about all the activity in the backyard and even neighbours got involved: one family put out a kiddie pool so the ducks had access to water, and one young elementary student on the street wrote about them for a school project.
“It’s been fascinating to see, a beautiful experience,” Gallo said.
He took precautions for the duck family, putting on porch lights at night to deter possums.
“The wildlife these days is a bit more out there,” he said of his Renforth-Rathburn neighbourhood. “There were wild turkeys at Keele and Lawrence; it’s kind of like ‘Jumanji.’ ”
Before the school shutdown, Gallo and Toronto police Const. Mike Skelhorne had planned to run a “Kids in the Coop” project for special-needs students at Dante, hatching duck eggs. Skelhorne owns a farm and was able to advise Gallo during his backyard pandemic project on “the gestation period and what to do and what not to do. He’s been hatching eggs for quite some time.”
Once the ducklings hatched last weekend, Gallo and wife Angela — who is also a teacher — escorted the whole duck family two kilometres to a pond at Centennial Park, getting a lot of attention and even stopping traffic along the way. (And, as teachers, they kept counting heads during the entire walk.)
Neighbours Debbie and Roman Kolankowski said two adult ducks were frequent visitors to their property, starting in mid-March. The couple filled a garbage can lid with water “and the female would come and sit in that,” while the male “seemed to spend a lot of time in front of the mirror” in their yard.
“We’ve been here for over 20 years and we have always seen ducks. But this is the first time they were in our yard,” said Roman Kolankowski.
They put out the plastic kiddie pool they’d purchased for their two young grandchildren and, given its “Frozen” movie theme, they named their visitors Olaf and Elsa.
“The kids were all involved in it. The grandkids were here when the ducks hatched” and little Nathan Gallo “thought it was a big thrill,” added Roman Kolankowski. “It was a great nature experience in the city.”