Houses are like people and some have had harder lives than others. Take the 1890 Victorian currently for sale at 206 Carlton St. in Cabbagetown. It’s listed for nearly $1.7 million and is described as “perfect for buyers who appreciate the character this property offers.” Part of that character, unmentioned in the listing, is that for nearly 25 years it was home to Canada’s Neo-Nazi movement.

Notorious holocaust denier Ernst Zundel lived here from 1975 until the early 2000s, operating his Samisdat Press, through which he printed and distributed anti-Semitic material.

Zundel was a graphic artist by trade, and as early as 1978 the city directory had a triple listing at 206 for the Carlton Gallery, Idea Centre, and Zundel Studios. By 1988 the listing was Zundel Studios and The Great Ideas Advertising Centre Inc., and by 2000, Samisdat was listed along with Zundel Ernest (sic) Artist. It is rare now, in the Internet age, to see a hate-monger with a street address, and the house wears some of the collateral damage of his tenure here.

What was once just another grand Victorian along a handsome stretch of Carlton, the house was increasingly fortified, turned into what Zundel and his followers called “The Bunker.” It represents a dark era when Neo-Nazism was on the rise in Canada as well as the violent vigilante response to it.

In 1993 the house was still rather cheery looking, with white brick, red accents, and a gabled roof. A story The Star ran that year described how Zundel had covered his house in plastic in preparation for 200 anti-racist demonstrators rampaging through Toronto’s east end who had attacked another white-supremacist’s home on Dundas St. Though a pipe bomb had been sent to the house in 1984, 206 Carlton merely had a standard waist-high fence and a security camera out front at this point.

The property’s most dramatic changes happened after 1995 when an early morning firebomb was detonated on its porch on May 7 of that year, the 50th anniversary of V-E Day — the day Nazi Germany surrendered — after which a higher fence went up and a blockhouse-like addition was built on the top floor.

As Zundel became more famous, the house itself began to embody traits of the philosophy that was generated within it: fear, isolation, and ugliness.

Even after Zundel was deported and the property became divided into rental apartments the defunct remnants of the fortifications lasted for years: a CCTV camera over the door; high-powered lights mounted to the façade, and a conspicuous amount of bars over the windows. The high fence is still there but the gate isn’t always clamped shut and without Zundel and his bodyguards in residence, it’s just become another ramshackle Toronto house.

Real estate listings are curious bits of creative non-fiction with fish-eye photos taken from weird angles and inflated prose. The listing for 206 only includes pictures of the outside of the home, always the kind of omission that peaks curiosity. It also says that the property only has had three ownerships in its 125 years, though no mention of who they were.

Does a place like this deserve a plaque? Probably. We shouldn’t just remember the positive sites around Toronto; to this end Heritage Toronto has been doing good work affixing plaques to the happy and not-so-happy historic spots around the city. The people living here now, innocent just as the house itself is, would likely prefer their house not be a memorial to a hateful and violent period in the city’s history.

206 Carlton is a story of how something beautiful can become ugly. Today, racism and other evils are often more elusive, underground, and online. Maybe there should be a plaque here to remind us that there is evil out there in Toronto the Good, but also that the city can indeed change for the better.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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