Toronto mansion owners ordered to tear down wall on their property, only a year after city approved it

The owners of a residence in Toronto's Rosedale neighbourhood ar existence ordered to shoot shoot down down a wall built around part of their property — only a year after the city gave them a permit to build it.

According to city records, the issue began in July 2023 when the couple, Michele and Matthew McGrath, applied to the city's transportation department for an easement to build a wall and several other features, like security gates, along their corner property's Glen Road and Whitney Avenue perimeter.

But according to Alan Preyra, a lawyer who specializes in municipal law, the home lies within a designated heritage neighbourhood. And city documents show one department issued permission to build the wall a month before preservation planners found out about it.

"The city is a hydra with many heads, and a lot of times those heads don't communicate with one another," Preyra said.

"It's very hard on citizens, especially when they follow the process as directed."

Now, the dispute is before the courts, with the homeowners asking a judge to order the city to allow the wall to stay, according to legal documents filed in August with the Superior Court of Justice. They're also asking that the city be ordered to pay their legal costs, although no dollar figures are mentioned.

"The late-breaking change caused and continues to cause significant harm to McGrath," the legal submission says. "McGrath spent significant funds building the landscape improvement," which their lawyer notes in the documents, "is in a near-finished state."

"As you can appreciate, this matter has been extremely stressful for myself, my wife and our family," he wrote. "This was not a case of a homeowner making renovations in contravention or defiance of City by-laws or codes. It is the opposite."

"We do not believe that it is fair for the City to change positions so late in the process."

The North Toronto Residents Association has refused comment and local councillor Dianne Saxe has not responded to requests for comment.

City council tackled the issue at its meeting this week, but it's unclear what councillors decided to do about it as the discussion involved confidential legal documents.

The couple's plan for the project was detailed, according to a Sept. 19 letter to the city from their lawyer, Rodney Gill:

"Our Clients personally took the time to visit 12 brick mason mills in the Toronto area. None of them made bricks using the same technique that the original bricks on their home did – wood fired. As a result, they sourced the bricks from a kiln in Philadelphia to ensure that the bricks for the landscaping wall have the same colouration and pattern as those on their home," his letter says.

"This took many months and was much more expensive than simply buying cheaper local bricks."

In May 2024, the city's Toronto and East York Community Council, including Saxe, voted to give transportation services the authority to issue a permit to the couple, which was done that autumn.

Construction began in October 2024.

Work was well underway when, the following month, staff from the city's heritage planning department visited the McGraths' home. City records don't show what drew heritage staff's attention to the site, but it's well within the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District, which was designated by the city in 2004.

Homeowners whose properties lie within these districts face special conditions when it comes to altering the exterior of their homes, according to Diane Chin, an executive with the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.

One of the main conditions is that the alterations don't significantly change the streetscape, which a garden wall may well do, she says.

"There have been exceptions...where people have replaced porches and decks," she said. "But not significantly, because it would change the whole look of the street."

This past January, when the work was almost finished, staff were back at the site, instructing the couple to apply for a heritage permit and in the meantime, to stop working on the project.

By March, that stop-work request had become an order, authorized by city council, to tear out the wall.

The couple responded by applying, in July, city records show, for a heritage permit that would allow them to alter their home's exterior features, arguing the Ontario Heritage Act exempts landscaping projects, like a wall, from regulation in a designated conservation district.

A Toronto Preservation Board (TPB) hearing on that application was scheduled for September, by which time the issue appears to have attracted a significant amount of attention in the neighbourhood. 

Scores of people — including figure skater Tessa Virtue and the Toronto Maple Leafs Morgan Rielly — made written submissions to the city about the project, according to a staff report, some for it and some against.

At the TPB hearing in September, the permit application was refused on the grounds that the wall "creates a physical and visual barrier that...has an unacceptable impact on the park-like setting central to the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District Plan."

For now, the couples' lawsuit is going forward, although it's not clear when the matter will next be in court.

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