Couple fights to rid Toronto home of heritage status

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. 

The couple applied to the board iin January to have that designation repealed on the grounds that it was approved by the city in haste in 2018.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.

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."

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.