Celebrating Toronto's built heritage of row houses, semis, and cottages and the people who lived in them.
Too often, workers' cottages are characterized today as being small, cramped, poorly built, and disposable. But in the late 1800s, to have worked and saved enough money to move into one was an incredible achievement. Moving from the crowded conditions of boarding houses, or areas such as Toronto's Ward or Ashport's "shanty-town," to a self-contained, six-hundred-square-foot row house was the result of an unimaginably strong hope, belief, and commitment for the future.

These "modest hopes" are an under-valued heritage resource and an important but forgotten part of the Toronto narrative about the people who lived in them and who built our city.