Those Early Morning Rounds

Her name was Miss Cronk, and she lived in a rental building atop the Avenue Road hill in Toronto. Mayfair Mansions, it was called, though her stifling apartment was hardly a mansion. It was a claustrophobic warren of newspapers piled close to the ceiling. Like the Great Pyramid of Giza, it defied easy comprehension of its creation.

Miss Cronk listened for me each morning, between 6:30 and 7 a.m., cracking her door just as I got there. She accepted each issue of the Globe and Mail as if it were a gift.

Every month or so, I knocked on her door after dinner. “Who is it?” she’d call. “Collecting,” I’d answer. “Ah yes, just a moment,” she’d coo, as if this was the high point of her week. It didn’t occur to me that no one else ever knocked on her door. I’m sure she would have invited me to step inside, if there’d been anywhere to step.

She would’ve been perfect for Hoarders. Back then she was simply a sweet, eccentric, white-haired...