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“Did you see Apartment 10?”

The question caught Henry Zavriyev by surprise. He was visiting a building he recently purchased in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, which is under renovation, so he followed his contractor to the apartment.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or N.D.G. tenant covers his apartment with hateful graffiti before leaving Back to video

First he noticed the handwritten words “Warning may contain explicit lyrics” inscribed on the door. He then entered the vacant dwelling to find it covered — wall to wall, top to bottom — with vitriol. Hundreds upon hundreds of offensive words, including homophobic and sexist slurs, were printed in paint or marker (he couldn’t tell which), most of it not suitable to be shared in a family newspaper.

Zavriyev, who is Jewish, wasn’t overly bothered by it. But when he showed it to some Jewish friends, they were disturbed by one line: “dirty f—ing Jew fag.”

“In my business, you have to have a certain character to deal with this kind of stuff,” he said.

Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

Zavriyev moved here from Boston in 2012. He worked odd jobs, initially, while at Concordia studying political science, before finding investors and getting into real estate.