“This was with the photo,” she says, then she averts her gaze.
Please take care of my baby. I love her so much, but I cannot give her a good life.
God bless you. Rosie Ryan
I gasp. “Grandma!”
Never in my life have I seen this letter. It’s written in my great-grandmother’s simple handwriting, and it’s crushing.
“You know your mother’s name! Rosie Ryan! What a wonderful name. And now you know where she worked. This is amazing. I wish we knew which one was her in the photograph.” I scowl at Grandma. “I can’t believe you’ve kept this hidden away for so long. Tell me more! No one knows anything about her? Where she went? What happened? Did you ever try to find her?”
Grandma takes the paper back, folds it again, and drops it into the tin. “No. Rosie Ryan abandoned me at a church, then disappeared. And once the Davises adopted me, what was the use in searching? It always felt wrong to look into it when I had two perfectly wonderful parents.”
“But…” I can’t believe I’m learning all this. “But did you try?”
She gives me a sharp glare. “I did. I went to the orphanage where they adopted me from, and they sent me to the church, all the way up in North Bay. Nobody knew anything about her. She was long gone.” Her tiny shoulder lifts, then drops. She sets the lid onto the tin and shoves it down securely. “Now put this away and let’s talk about something else. Anything else.”
As soon as I’ve left my grandmother’s apartment, I whip out my phone.
BK: I need a favour
MB: Of course. Ask away.
BK: In your research of the hotel, can you please look up a chambermaid named Rosie Ryan? She worked there in 1929.
MB: Sure. May I ask why? Something specific?
BK: She is in that group pic of the chambermaids that you showed me, but I don’t know which one. I just found out that Rosie Ryan is my great-grandmother!
chapterTWENTY–TWO
It’s not a stretch to say that on Monday morning, I am thoroughly distracted, thinking about Rosie and the Dominion, wondering who she was and where she’d gone. Walking through the lobby, I decide to follow one of the lesser-used corridors to the subbasement and the maids’ locker room. The floor is lined by a recently replaced red carpet. I read somewhere that if all of the red carpet in this place was laid out end to end, it would reach Hamilton, almost fifty miles away. Imagine the poor guys who laid it all.
The corridor has been changed over the years, of course, but as I walk, I picture the old walls, the original light fixtures, and the small wooden lockers the young women would have used back then. In the photo I’d seen, they had to be under twenty years old, and I imagine them gossiping as they pulled on their crisp black-and-white uniforms, maybe talking about a special guest arriving that day. I wish there was a way… I wish I could feel Rosie Ryan there, in spirit. I can’t stop smiling, enjoying an unexpected connection to this little room. My great-grandmother stood here. Walked here. Worked here.
I am also distracted by the fact that the Montey Series Industries cratesare not what they appear to be. My greatest fear is that somebody might suspect that I know. So that’s a little disturbing, to say the least.
I go to the ballroom, where I hope to find Paul. I have questions, and he’s the one I trust. But Gary is the only person there, and he tells me Paul still hasn’t shown up for work.
“Is he at the Sixes?”
He turns his back to me. “Got me.”
“I was just wondering because—”
“Listen, I got enough to do without having to babysit him and report to you.”
Again he stomps out of the room, loaded down with big, heavy crates.
Feeling a little dazed by his dismissal, I head up to the fourteenth floor. The Dominion’s rooftop garden, with its four thousand square feet of raised gardens and the new addition of seven beehives, is usually closed off unless you request a tour or there is a special event. I’m lucky because I need to check a few things today, like drainage and some of the electrical work. I step outside and am greeted by dazzling sunshine. I soak it all in, listening to the hum of the bees and inhaling the scents of fresh basil, sage, tarragon, mint, and lemon balm. As they have for a century, the hotel’s chefs come up here daily and take what they need so they can serve it on a plate. Or in a cocktail drink. Imagine the four hundred and fifty pounds of honey made annually by their six hundred thousand bees. A rooftop garden like this would have been relatively unheard-of in the old days, but now it appears what was old is new again: the city recently put in a law mandating green spaces on the tops of towers, just like this one. I can’t think of a better, more aromatic way to contribute to sustainability.
Fourteen storeys down, I hear the noises of the city and take advantage of the moment to peer over the edge of the balcony, admiring the view. So much construction, so many people. It never stops. Not like a hundred years ago, when construction was just beginning.
Back then, there had been a large neighbourhood a few blocks east of where I’m standing, called The Ward. I actually know a lot about the area,despite it being a little-known part of our history, because history is my thing. The Ward spread out within the boundaries of College Street, Queen Street, Yonge Street, and University Avenue. Bay Street, which was Terauley Street back then, ran right through the middle. I can’t see it from here, but there wouldn’t be much to see anyway. Most of the buildings there now were actually builton topof what used to be there.
During its heyday in the mid-nineteenth century, the area was considered a regular working-class neighbourhood. It was started by a fugitive slave, Thornton Blackburn, in the 1830s. After escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad, he bought up multiple properties and filled the area with more fugitive slaves and other Black families. A few decades later, they were joined by Jewish, Chinese, and Italian immigrant families, then refugees from Ireland, Eastern Europe, Russia, and other countries. Toronto’s first Chinatown began there.
Over time, the once pleasant area became overwhelmed and overcrowded. A workhouse was built. The row houses, which sometimes housed six people to a room, decayed. People added smaller buildings in their backyards just to make space for their families. In the end, the area became the epitome of a slum: filthy, poor, and falling apart. Exactly what the growing city of Toronto did not want.
