206 Carlton street near Ontario, in Cabbagetown. Until recently this house was mounted with security cameras staring from every appendage and the occasional police car sitting out front. The barred windows and bunkner like appearance relate more to the previous owner, Holocaust denyer Ernst Zundel, than they do to the Ryerson students who I now see negotiating with some difficulty the gates and security systems en route to the basement apartment.

Zundel based his small-hate-press Samisdat out of this building from the 70’s to the mid 90’s. Apparently this place was firebombed in 1995. I grew up in Detroit where the delicate art of untracable firebombing was the social pastime that crossed all class and social boundaries, practiced by both disenfranchised youth acting out, the upper middle classes hoping to collect their insurance and flee the city, social activists demonstrating against inequity, and concerned parents attempting to rid their neighbourhoods of abandoned houses serving as crack dens and hiding places for potential rapists. I had been lulled into a sense of security upon my move to Ottawa - but soon after I got there in the 80’s a huge house in Sandy Hill on the north side of either Stewart or Wilbrod streets (?) east of Charlotte was firebombed reportedly perpetrated by neo-nazis targeting a prominent Jewish family, and one of a string of bombings in that period across the country. Shook me to my core to realize that it could happen everywhere.

Zundel left Canada for Tennessee in 2000, but was detained by US authorities in 2003, deported to Canada, and from there deported to Germany for trial. On Feb 15th, 2007 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for outstanding charges of outstanding charges of incitement for Holocaust denial, dated from the mid 1990’s.