The characters inhabiting Copernicus Avenue, a fictitious street modelled after Toronto's Roncesvalles neighbourhood, know all too well how deeply connected the present is to the past. But these people - a disparate cast made up of artists and soldiers, revolutionaries and innocents - are not hapless victims, subject to forces beyond their control. Like all who have journeyed to a new land, the people of Copernicus Avenue have turned their past into raw material to build a life with.