A Toronto homeowner is taking the city to court over a garden wall in the Rosedale neighbourhood.
Earlier this year, Toronto City Council denied a homeowner’s bid to keep and complete a large masonry wall that went up without heritage permissions in the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District, one of the city’s oldest planned suburbs and a neighbourhood long defined by its open, park-like character.
The dispute centred on 2 Whitney Ave., formerly 135 Glen Rd., a 1909 home perched above Whitney Park.
According to city records, the saga began in July 2023, when the McGraths applied to Toronto’s transportation department for an easement to add a brick wall and other security features, like gates. In May 2024, Toronto and East York Community Council greenlit the project. The permit came that fall, and construction began in October 2024, according to the documents.
The property falls within North Rosedale’s heritage district, designated in 2004 to safeguard the area’s early-20th-century Garden Suburb design.
According to city reports, the homeowner constructed the wall along the Glen Road and Whitney Avenue edges of the corner lot in late 2024 but didn’t have the required heritage permit. Work stopped when city staff intervened. A retroactive application was later submitted in July 2025.
Heritage staff said the new wall — rising more than two metres at points with tall brick pillars — undermines the defining characteristics of North Rosedale. The district’s original plan emphasized continuity between private yards and the surrounding ravine-edged parkland, with low, visually permeable boundaries that preserved sightlines and contributed to the neighbourhood’s distinctive sense of openness. The solid barrier now facing the public realm is said to interrupt those views.
Lawyer Rodney Gill, of Goodmans LLP, representing the homeowner, said in a letter to the Toronto Preservation Board (TPB) that the wall should be allowed based on the Ontario Heritage Act and that his client has gone to great lengths to ensure the wall is in keeping with the area.
“There have been at least 33 communications submitted to the TPB in support of the Application,” Gill stated. “The comments are glowing and remark on the great lengths our clients have gone to in ensuring their landscape wall project is carried out in the style and character of their home and the broader neighbourhood.”
The North Rosedale Residents’ Association disagrees.
“In consultations with Heritage Planning, we have been advised that the proposed structure, which was erected on public lands subject to an encroachment agreement and without a heritage permit, does not comply with the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District Plan,” the association wrote, in a letter to TPB.
The statement of claim argues that the Ontario Heritage Act shouldn’t apply to what the homeowners characterize as landscaping work, like walls, within a heritage district.
