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Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood has trendy bars, million-dollar homes and a little slice of anarchist heaven.

The U-shaped laneway, behind a chain of 19th-century row houses on Elm Grove Avenue, circles around a large wooden structure with numerous units and padlocked barn-style doors. It also bears the distinction of having not had its taxes paid since the 1890s.

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That’s the discovery a nearby property owner made while trying to find a route for a water line.

“It’s where I go when I’m tired of the oppression of the private state,” local Councillor Gord Perks said wryly the other day. “Nobody owns it, no government wants it.”

It’s the sort of thing that happens in a big city like Toronto, full of in-between spaces that are easily ignored and, it seems, forgotten.

“Orphaned laneways,” as they are known — and this appears to be one of them — are private lanes to which no one claims ownership. The last known record may date back over a century, making the process of tracking anyone who could lay claim pretty much futile.

One 2012 study identified 27 unclaimed laneways in a downtown quadrant bounded by University Avenue, Bloor, Queen and Sherbourne streets.

The quirky Parkdale discovery began with a man who wanted to build a house in his backyard and had to figure out how to bring water service to it.