Together they establish a photography business and set out to create images of a fledgling city where wooden sidewalks are put together with penny nails, where Indians spear salmon at the river mouth and the occasional bear ambles down King Street, where department stores display international wares and fine mansions sit cheek-by-jowl with shantytowns.Ĭonsolation moves back and forth between David Hollis’s legacy and Jem Hallam’s struggle to survive, ultimately revealing a mysterious connection between the two narratives. Crushed by ruthless competitors, he develops an unlikely friendship with two other down-on-their-luck Torontonians: Samuel Ennis, a brilliant but dissolute Irishman, and Claudia Rowe, a destitute widow. Interwoven into the contemporary story is another narrative set in 1850s: the tale of Jem Hallam, a young apothecary struggling to make a living in the harsh new city so he can bring his wife and daughters from England. An orphan who had come to love David as his own father, John finds himself caught in a struggle between mother and daughter–all the while keeping a dark secret from both women. The only person to share her vigil is John Lewis, fiancé to her daughter, Bridget. His colleagues, however, are convinced that he faked his research materials.ĭetermined to vindicate him, his widow, Marianne, sets up camp in a hotel overlooking the construction site, watching and waiting for the boat to be unearthed.

He postulated that on the site where a sports arena is about to be built lie the ruins of a Victorian boat containing an extraordinary treasure: a strongbox full of hundreds of never-seen photographs of early Toronto, a priceless record of a lost city. A renowned professor of “forensic geology,” David leaves in his wake both a historical mystery and an academic scandal. These are among the last words of Professor David Hollis before he throws himself off a ferry into the frigid waters of Lake Ontario.

But we stop them up with concrete and build over them and whatever it is they wanted to say gets whispered down empty alleys and turns into wind.” “There is a vast part of this city with mouths buried in it.

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill