BK: Yes, thanks.
Right away, my phone buzzes.
Grandma: Hello my favourite granddaughter! Bring dinner!
I taught Grandma how to text a few years ago. It takes her ages to write anything. She’s ninety-four years old, and her hands are understandably gnarled from arthritis, so it makes for some great autocorrect moments. She also loves to finish every sentence with an exclamation mark. Her “favourite granddaughter” line is a joke between us. I’m the only one she’s got.
BK: I’ll bring your favourite.
Grandma: Chicken balls with red sauce!
BK: And chicken fried rice. See you around 5:30.
Grandma: I will put the kettle on!
I remind myself to stop on the way and get her some chocolate-covered digestives.
My phone vibrates again.
MB: Hello. This is Mr. M. Buchanan, Archivist with the City of Toronto Archives, responding to your query, delivered by Mr. J. Samson.
I shouldn’t be, but I’m amused by the formality of the message. I appreciate history, but my love for it is nothing like what true history nerds feel. Based on the ones I have met, I’d say most don’t seem completely comfortable in the present. I reply with the same formality, since he’s the one doing me a favour.
BK: Hello. I’m Bridget Kelly, Building Inspector, Amateur Historian. Mr. Buchanan, I am doing some work at the Dominion Hotel, and I am curious about the hotel’s history. Do you think you might have time for a coffee?
MB: I am currently busy in the archives. Perhaps you could come here at your convenience?
BK: That sounds ideal. When would be a good time for you?
MB: In an hour?
BK: Please send me the address.
chapterTEN
I check my watch and get going. Easiest way to the archives is to jump on the subway, then head to Dupont Station. Just the right timing.
I can’t believe I’ve never visited the City of Toronto Archives before. It’s close to Casa Loma, which Ihavevisited, of course. Casa Loma is a gorgeous, Gothic Revival castle-style mansion, right in Midtown Toronto, with its own stables and hunting lodge, where the servants lived. Ninety-eight rooms, almost sixty-five thousand square feet, and the perfect set for weddings and movies. It’s a fascinating building, even before you learn it used to house a World War II spy school. They came up with all the fancy spy weapons there, like “M” did in the 007 books and movies. In a way, Casa Loma is a bit like the Dominion with its extravagances: an oven large enough to cook an ox, a central vacuum system, secret passages, a pool, and three bowling lanes in the basement. Not exactly what you’d expect for a building that went up around the start of World War I.
The Toronto Archives is modest. It’s just over thirty years old and designed by Zeidler Architecture, who designed the Toronto Eaton Centre in the seventies. Outside the archives, I pass under a welcoming metal archway, then through the front entrance. The atrium is a lovely space with neatdisplays and photographs. A dusty rose stairway rises through the centre, toward the main archives. Upstairs, I check in, get a locker for my things, then tell the receptionist I am there to meet with Mr. Buchanan.
She frowns slightly. “Mr. Buchanan is expecting you?”
I nod, picturing a bespectacled old man hunched over a desk or spinning through a microfiche, barely aware that he’s in a public building in the twenty-first century.
“I see. One moment, please.” She picks up the phone, gives my name, then hangs up with an apologetic smile. “Sorry for my hesitation. It’s just that Mr. Buchanan doesn’t usually hold meetings. He says he’ll be right up.”
I stand back, taking in the sterile plainness of the reception area, basically the brown paper wrapping around what I imagine is a treasure chest of information. Most people come here for personal research, like finding out house and property values, but there’s so much more. I know from googling on my way over that the building itself is a marvel. It contains 144,000 boxes of records, worth well over $32 million. It is climate-controlled, completely fireproof, and monitored by CCTV cameras every hour of the day. Most of those, I assume, are stationed throughout the warehouse. For some reason, my mind offers a memory of the warehouse where Indiana Jones lost the Ark of the Covenant.
“Ms. Kelly?”
I turn. “Yes?”
Matthew Buchanan is neither ninety years old nor stooped, though he does wear glasses and a tweed jacket. He’s mid-thirties, probably, with medium-brown hair and a hesitant smile. He dresses—incredibly—much like Professor Jones, Indiana Jones’s alter ego.
“I am Matthew Buchanan,” he says. He takes me in shyly. “Nice to meet you.”
The receptionist notes his hesitation and smiles to herself, pretending to be engrossed in her computer screen. I would be distracted, too, working with such a handsome, interesting man.
