David pointed to where a pedestrian bridge spanned the Bayview Extension. “That was the edge of town for sixty years — the necropolis is right behind those trees. And you go down here” — his arm tracked slowly south — “and that was the middle of town. I guess it still is. Generally, you moved into the necropolis by the time you were fifty-five. That was old age. That makes me a lucky man, doesn't it?” - from Consolation, by Michael Redhill, page 145 Editor's Alert: Some early plot details revealed in this post. Consolation is a book about hope and optimism and forward-looking bravery, and so on, but first it is a book about death. Death comes in with the title and stays throughout the book; it looks over David Hollis's shoulder as he confronts ALS, it haunts his surviving family, and it courts every character in the desolate, squalid muck of early Toronto. So it's fitting that Consolation's geography is full of ghosts: two graveyards — Potter's Field and the Toronto Necropolis — make repeat appearances throughout the book. In the passage above, David Hollis takes a fateful drive with his prospective son-in-law, John, and acts as a wistful tour guide as they head south through the city. David is dying; he is on his way to die, and his speech to John is an elegy to the city he lived for. He describes a city long gone — the Toronto of the mid-19th century — and its ghosts hover over the landscape as the two men drive through it. He points to the necropolis, a picturesque graveyard on the edge of Cabbagetown , which looms above the river, where the city used to stop. The necropolis was the city's second non-sectarian cemetery; the first was the York General Burying Ground, sometimes called the “Strangers' Burying Ground,” but known most familiarly as Potter's Field. A six-hectare plot of land, Potter's Field opened in 1826 in anticipation of a population boom and of an assortment of scourges such as smallpox, scarlet fever, and tuberculosis. At the time of its purchase, Potter's Field was at the edge of town, at least a mile north of the nearest building. We know the area today as the corner of Yonge and Bloor.