The Torontonians
Consolation, Michael Redhill, 2006
Toronto figures as a major character in this inventive novel. Only two hundred years old, Toronto is constantly reinventing itself, destroying in the process all that went before. Unlike Montreal or Quebec, Toronto seems to have no interest in its history; only a vision toward the future.
The central human character here is an unlikely urban archaeologist whose main claim to fame is his discovery of the location of Toronto’s first parliament building. He has a degenerative muscle disease and not much longer to live. His future son in law is an unambitious seemingly dull man who works part time as a research assistant to a playwright with writer’s block. He spends most of his time in the libraries and archives of Toronto. There he uncovers the nineteenth century diary of a failed pharmacist who together with a presumed widow and aging Irish photographer set out to create a photographic record of Toronto as it was in the 1850’s. This record is lost when a paddle steamer sinks just yards from the wharf in Toronto. The steamer is presumably then buried under landfill as Toronto expands into the lake. Armed with the diary the archaeologist struggles to locate the buried steamer before he dies. We travel back and forth between 1850’s Toronto and 1990’s Toronto following the lives of these well drawn characters. Suspenseful, the book moves quickly to wards its surprise conclusion. Many of the novel’s key ingredients are based on little known historical fact; but it is the inventive combination of these facts that makes this work so enjoyable.