Toronto couple fights to rid home of heritage status over original owner’s ‘racist’ views

April 5, 2024 Canuck

A couple in an affluent midtown Toronto neighbourhood is asking the city to remove the heritage designation from their century home because they say the original owner was racist.

The two-and-a-half storey, 9,000-square foot house in the Yonge and St. Clair area, was built in 1906 for Stapleton Pitt Caldecott, a former Toronto Board of Trade president who was opposed to immigration, a University of Toronto historian says.

Dr. Arnold Mahesan, a fertility specialist of Sri Lankan descent, and his wife, entrepreneur and former Real Housewives of Toronto actor Roxanne Earle, whose family comes from Pakistan, bought the house in 2022 for $5 million, real estate records show. At the time, they say, they didn’t know the home had a heritage designation.

“Stapleton Caldecott would’ve been appalled by us living in the house he commissioned,” Mahesan told the March 28 meeting of the Toronto Preservation Board (TPB).

The couple, who identifies as mixed-race, told the board they only discovered their home was a designated heritage property last year, when they began looking into modifying the house’s steep stairway from the sidewalk.

Because of that heritage designation, they learned, they’d need to get permission from the city before making any major changes to the property.

This $5 million house on Woodlawn Avenue West, in the Yonge and St. Clair area was commissioned by Stapleton Caldecott in 1906, a man who some believe held anti-immigrant views. He died there the following year. — This $5-million house on Woodlawn Avenue West, in the Yonge and St. Clair area, was commissioned by Stapleton Caldecott in 1906, a man who some believe held anti-immigrant views. He died there the following year. (Tina MacKenzie/CBC)

The couple applied to the board iin January to have that designation repealed on the grounds that it was approved by the city in haste in 2018. They say a closer look would have revealed its original owner held views that should have excluded it from preservation.

The city doesn’t currently have a policy that would bar buildings owned by such individuals from gaining heritage status.

In making their allegations about Caldecott at last week’s board meeting, the couple cited a report by University of Toronto lecturer Michael Akladios, which points out that Caldecott was anti-immigration, and in favour of newcomers assimilating into mainstream society.

The board turned down the couple’s request, but Earle and Mahesan have vowed to fight on, according to their lawyer, Michael Campbell. The decision won’t be final until it is approved by city council, where it’s expected to come up by the end of May.

“We intend to realize every opportunity we can to try to convince council to repeal the designation,” Campbell told CBC Toronto.

Designation largely about architecture, report says

A city staff report to the TPB concluded the home’s designation had little to do with its association with Caldecott. Instead, the report says the home is worth preserving because it was designed by prominent Toronto architect Eden Smith and because of the unique structural qualities he brought to the building.

“Staff maintain that the property is valued as a fine representative example of an early 20th century house form building designed in the Period Revival style influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement,” the report says. “It is distinguished by its asymmetrical plan with the projecting bays, the complicated roofline with the gables and the distinctive canted chimneys, and the decorative wood strapwork.”

Toronto Preservation Board Member and chair of the Toronto and East York Community Heritage Panel Adam Wynne says he's never heard of a heritage designation being challenged on the grounds that a past owner was a racist. — Toronto Preservation Board Member and chair of the Toronto and East York Community Heritage Panel Adam Wynne says he’s never heard of a heritage designation being challenged on the grounds that a past owner was a racist. (Tina MacKenzie/CBC)

Adam Wynne, a board member and chair of the Toronto and East York Community Preservation Panel, told CBC Toronto his own research shows that Caldecott only lived in the house for a few months before he died in 1907.

After learning the home they’d bought was a designated heritage property named Caldecott House, the couple approached Akladios last October and asked him to look into Caldecott, the lecturer told CBC Toronto.

Akladios said that within weeks he told the couple that if they wanted to object to the house’s heritage designation, they’d be better off focusing on the building’s architectural merits than on Caldecott, because he felt they’d have a better chance challenging the designation on those grounds.

They told him to “keep looking” Akladios told CBC Toronto.

By the end of November, he said he provided them with a report concluding it may have been unwise for the city to reference Caldecott in designating the building a heritage site.

“Contrary to the assertions in the Report of the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning Division, the association with Robert Stapleton Pitt Caldecott may not suffice, given Caldecott’s restrictive views on immigration and position on education as a vehicle for assimilation to safeguard the character of the Dominion of Canada under the empire,” Akladios wrote in his report.

But while Caldecott believed immigrants should be assimilated into the mainstream society of the day, Akladios told CBC Toronto, “I don’t call him a racist in my report. It’s perhaps their (the homeowners’) view…I don’t call him a racist.”

City removes references from heritage documents

Instead of repealing the heritage designation bylaw, the board voted to remove all references to Caldecott from city documents that explain the house’s significance.

Mahesan told the board that’s not good enough. He said simply removing references to Caldecott amounts to “putting our thumbs over that part of history.”

“The only appropriate remedy is to repeal the bylaw” that gave the home its heritage designation in the first place, he said.

It was the steep staircase leading from the sidewalk to the front door that led to the couple discovering their house had a heritage designation and therefore could not be altered without city approval. (City of Toronto)

The city receives on average 1,800 to 2,000 applications a year from homeowners who want to alter their heritage properties, city staff told CBC Toronto in an email. “Almost all are approved,” the email says.

Worth looking into other sites, board member says

Wynne told CBC Toronto he’s never heard of a property owner who wanted the heritage designation removed from their property on the grounds that the original owner allegedly held racist views.

He added that it’s worth looking into past associations that other Toronto landmarks may have with prominent figures whose views would be considered repugnant by today’s standards.

Another board member, Paul Cordingley, told last week’s meeting the Mahesan-Earle application raises significant points about what a heritage designation means.

“I think we have to find a way of disengaging preservation from celebrating,” he said. “Because I would not want anyone to think that if we’re trying to maintain the designation of this house, that we are celebrating or downplaying what goes along with that.”

He added that prospective homeowners should be expected to research a property they’re interested in buying.

Earle told CBC Toronto she’s upset with the board’s decision, calling it “a smack in the face.”

“How would I know that a city like Toronto has a preservation society which intends to celebrate racism more than the people living in the homes?” she asked. “How is that something an average homeowner is supposed to know?”

CBC Toronto asked TPB Chair Julia Rady for a response to the allegation that the board celebrates racism. She has not yet responded.

Earle said she intends to pursue the couple’s goal of having the heritage designation removed from the house. Their lawyer raised the possibility of taking the matter to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, if necessary.

As for whether the couple is looking to renovate or demolish the house, Earle told CBC Toronto they’re not looking to have the designation removed “as a tactic.”

“I have no plans of developing this house or changing this house,” she told CBC Toronto.

“My issue is that I’ve done great work in this city and yet still I have to be racialized by living in a house that is celebrating something so anti everything that my husband and I are.”

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