Every large city has its variation of Toronto's Cabbagetown. It's that city-within-a-city where the struggling poor live, where life is sometimes measured out in spoonsful and where there's more joy in knowing that the bills have been paid than there is in all of Christmas. There's sadness in Cabbagetown, but there's a whole lot of living and loving and laughter too.

Toronto's Cabbagetown has all but vanished; houses that were built for $5,000 now sell for twenty times that sum because it's considered rather chic to have a Cabbagetown address. But the souls of the hundreds of thousands who lived there when it was real still haunt the place. On a hot summer's night you can hear them whispering, if you listen closely.