It’s an unseasonably hot autumn day, about 25 degrees Celsius. I turn from Franklin Avenue onto Hancock Street, hugged tight by imposing four-storey Italianate brownstone terraces that frame each side of the road. Stoops worn smooth by decades of hard footsteps on soft sandstone seem to whisper secrets from a storied past, as they rise above ornate cast-iron black railings that line the weathered grey sidewalk. It’s almost Halloween and many of the frontages, set back from the street, are dressed in suitably spooky paraphernalia. Brownstones seem made for this holiday, as though their architects anticipated the dressing of orange pumpkins and faux spider cobweb decoration when designing those mud-coloured facades.