"Catherine Runchey, rooming house operator extraordinaire," says Trish fondly, looking at the plaque on her house. "We don"t know much about her, except that she lived here." Along with other of the Robert Brown row houses near the revamped AGO, the house is on its way to being listed as a Heritage building.

The house dates from the transitional period between the Grange"s aristocratic heyday in the mid-1800s and its population shift in the 1890s, when the area became home to new Canadians making the transition to a new life in Toronto. Mrs. Runchey"s house reminds me of English author Jerome K. Jerome, who once wrote: "I want a house that has got over all its troubles. I don"t want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house". Posted by: Lisa    Source

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