For about a year and a half my son lived at the corner of Glen Baillie Pl. and Spadina on the action-packed edge of Kensington Market (across from the Rick Mercer rant wall). I didn’t do a ton of exploration in the neighbourhood, but I expect many Canadians have at least a passing familiarity with the area – its sounds, sights and smells. Wong’s Denison Avenue was revelatory for a tourist like me – a look at the community and relationships that make the neighbourhood. It’s an at-times heartbreaking but gentle and loving homage to the streets of Chinatown and the people who live in it. It’s a disappearing neighbourhood and will eventually be lost to gentrification – a dynamic that we know across the country and are apparently unable to solve so long as property is a market and while we’re reluctant to act collectively to preserve spaces.

Daniel Innes’ illustrations are a separate section of the book and make fascinating viewing. When most of the neighbourhood has fully gentrified, these will be an important record of a point in time during which everything hung in the balance.