During his formative years as a child my husband's family lived in rented quarters, in half of a two-story house located on Kensington Street itself, in Kensington Market. My own family lived in similar circumstances, but on Manning Avenue, aeons ago. When, during our Toronto stay this past week, we decided to walk over to a park nearby the hotel we were staying at in Chinatown, we also decided we'd stroll through at least part of Kensington Market.

The area always looked run-down in our memory, both when we were young and later as the parents of two boys who attended University of Toronto, and who became accustomed to shopping at the market we'd known ourselves as youngsters. We would walk through the market with them as they bought fruit and vegetables, bread and cheese to take back to the apartment we'd rented for them, thirty years ago. At that time Kensington still largely resembled the place we had ourselves known.

Now it looks more tumbled-down, more decrepit, and its nature has changed. At one time it was largely an immigrant-Jewish enclave, and later on a succession of newly-arriving immigrants coming in as waves of new Canadians began to shoulder away the originals to represent the cuisine and customs of the countries and traditions they had left behind. Nothing now seems to be left of the many creameries, bakeries and other enterprises that Jewish Canadian immigrants had operated for a largely Jewish clientele. And as noisy, dirty, crowded and worn-out as it looked back then, it's just far more so now.

Now, among the fruiterers and bakeries there are new-age shops, therapists, herbalists, shmatah purveyors galore and the area has been transformed from one of familiar nostalgia to indifferent unfamiliarity, to us. Not much quaint about this new scene. It is interesting and sad to see a forlorn-looking old synagogue sitting hemmed in by ethnic commercial enterprises reflecting the oriental presence that once had a much smaller footprint, but is now engulfing a good portion of downtown. Times change.

Not only do times change, but so does the atmosphere, the actual breathing environment. Each time we ventured out of the hotel it was to perambulate along to some walking destination through crowds of people on similar ventures to our own, or just going about their daily routines. The air was suffocatingly tainted, and the results could be felt in my increased heartbeat and strangely and unaccustomed congested lungs making walking far more uncomfortable than it would normally be. I'm a great natural walker and accustomed to walking good enough lengths every day of my life. There, it became a bit of a struggle.

It was hugely alleviated when we were in High Park, the air filtered by the trees and immense greenspace, but it left me to wonder about the health prospects of all those people crammed into a relatively restricted geographic area in the city's downtown. The irony of it is that among the many assisted housing complexes, there are also high-rise condominiums, expensive to own or to rent where the with-it crowd celebrate themselves as cosmopolitan residents of a world-class city; both demographics breathing in the same hugely contaminated air.

We did revisit my husband's old haunts; the street where he once lived, the street where his public school was located, his chaider, the little shops that he and his friends would congregate at, or go out to run errands to pick up things their mothers tasked them with. And the park he recalled fondly spending so many days of his childhood, playing in. Battered, much-used as an inner-city park over

the decades, but recalled to memory.