The history of a home

Along the streets of Toronto's Cabbagetown, Victorian homesteads line the streets. Front steps lead up to the high arched doorways and fences surround the still-green lawns.

A community website boasts that the area houses "the largest continuous area of preserved Victorian housing in North America."

I live in one of the aging Victorian-era homes on the outskirts of Cabbagetown. Converted to cater to students, the house is split into four sections, and my roommates and I live on the bottom floor.

The high ceilings and spacious rooms first attracted us to the place. Encrusted and detailed mouldings frame the doors and border both the floor and roof.

Once elegant French doors open to my quarters while a sliding stained glass frame allows one to enter into the room across the hall.

The peeling hardwood floors no longer shine, but I'm sure at one point a lot of time was spent waxing and polishing the floors.

The framework of past fireplaces still remain, but the chimneys have been blocked and now a television and two plastic logs adorn the pit of each one.

It's fun to imagine what took place within within these walls over 100 years ago. One of us probably sleeps where a family once ate. Another might use the internet in a room where families gathered to sit and talk, socialize and read, free of TV and computers.

Maybe a well-off family spent most of their lives here and grew from young to old.

A century later, now cash-strapped students spend two or three years in the home before moving and allowing a new set to take up residence.