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Award-winning Toronto volunteers ordered to stop maintaining public park

Two Toronto volunteers are learning the true meaning of the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished."

As CBC News reports, Stickie Caddle and Blue Jays Curtis have been ordered by the city's parks department to cut back on the maintenance work they've been doing for the last two decades — free of charge — at their local park.

But it's not for aesthetic reasons that the department has put a kibosh on some of their activities at Fergy Brown Park.

Officials are concerned that either volunteer could injure himself while whacking weeds or tending to Curtis' vegetable garden. And they're even more concerned, perhaps, that the men could later sue the city.

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This bureaucratic rationale has left both men frustrated.

"Any place in Barbados you could go and do this kind of work — and people would object to it? Man, they'd give you two more weed whackers," Caddle told the news network.

Curtis is upset that he will no longer be able to grow and distribute his vegetables.

"I plant it and bag it out — bag it out and give to some of the senior citizens here. I put some in my car and give to people outside," he said.

A city spokesperson said in an email that the volunteers would be able to continue all prior chores, minus "power trimming and vegetable gardening."

That means they can still drain ditches and keep the park's cricket patch in perfect order.

Cold comfort for Curtis, who added, "You're going to disrespect me for doing voluntary work?"

Perhaps the city was reacting to the number of volunteer injury lawsuits that have led to major paydays for the afflicted parties.

Last month, New Hampshire courts settled a suit between a Vermont man and a local speedway after the man, who was volunteering for a charity event at the venue, suffered brain damage after he was thrown from a golf cart driven by a speedway employee.

Ronald Day received a $5.9 million payout after he was injured during a volunteer church-building mission trip in Mexico.

Though Canada is still a far less litigious country than the U.S., the threat of an injury-by-vegetable-gardening lawsuit must be stronger than the desire for perfectly trimmed grass.

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