The Globe and Mail

If these walls could talk ... A silly notion to be sure, but I went to listen anyway. Sitting with vacant, boarded-up stares like death-row prisoners and wearing demolition permits like badges of shame, more than a dozen large, fine houses and one small apartment building across from High Park have outlived their usefulness. Concentrated in a big U-shape made by Bloor Street West, Oakmount Road and Pacific Avenue, they're a kind of ghost town within the big city. I didn't go to cry, or to determine which sturdy brick porch pillar would be best to chain myself to when the bulldozers come, since their demolition is a fait accompli. No, I went to walk among these husks because, being a hopeless romantic, I thought their peeling, leaking walls might have something to tell me — to tell all of us — about the future of our city.