One Great City!

A fifty second bike ride east from the downtown core and I’m leaning on my handle bars, eyeing a pile of rubble. Nearby, a CNR freight procession rattles its way west. I dismount the bicycle and high step over some rusting ductwork that's laying across the grassy way between demolished and functional squalor. Just now a guy in his twenties walks past. This isn’t a place where I had expected to encounter strollers. But then, I’m here, aren’t I? Strolling, in a way.
His back is to me, now, so I call out. He looks back just before the path gets narrower and the young maples on either side start to reach for him. I ask if he knows what this used to be. He seems a little aggravated by the question. That I ask. Or that I am. Here.
“Don’t know,” is the answer. A look around. Then, “But sometimes the guys in that building,” he points to a recessed door in a squat building opposite the rubble, “sometimes they let their dog out. They don’t know anybody’s back here. They don't check. You know.” I thank him for the warning and watch him walk away with a bit of story he’d rather keep for himself.