The Nazi Hunter.

“Evil Jews Must Die”

I will never forget the day when I saw those four words along with a swastika carved into a wall panel on the elevator where I lived.

Never.

After getting married in 1982 Bonnie and I rented a couple apartments in the Weston area of Toronto before we decided to buy our first home. As a lifetime renter I was very apprehensive at first, but we finally pulled the trigger. We purchased a penthouse apartment in the brand new soon to be built twelve storey Courtney Club condominium. It was indeed a beautiful modern building and had almost every amenity you could ever want. The tennis court was by far my favourite with the hot tub coming in at a close second.

We bought our condo sight unseen in 1984 at a sales trailer which was sitting on a vacant lot in Mississauga where the building was to be built. We finally moved into the building in late 1988 after a four year wait due to numerous delays and labour strikes. As with any new unfinished condo building the residents would have to move into their units once they were deemed habitable by the builder. All the building’s finishing touches would then be completed over the coming weeks and months. Since our unit was on the top floor we were one of the last purchasers to move in.

Within a couple months all of the units were occupied and the brand new Courtney Club condo building legally became PCC-331 (Peel Condo Corporation #331).

Although Bonnie and I always had full intentions of living in our unit, there were approx. 25% of the buildings units occupied with renters. Some off-shore Chinese investors had bought multiple units for the sole purpose of renting them out. However, should the percentage of renters surpass the number of owners living in a condo then the building becomes more like an apartment building and that is something a condo owner never wants to see happen.

Why?

Because the theory is that an owner will take care of their new home much better than someone who is just renting. Building maintenance fees are sure to be higher in any condo where renters outnumber owners.

Or simply put, renters don’t really give a shit.

It was very late on one Friday night the following spring; I parked my car in my underground spot. Like I had done a hundred times already I used my passcard to enter the building and walk over to the elevators on the P1 level. The moment I got on the elevator I was horrified at what I saw. Someone had scratched evil Jews must die along with a swastika into the burgundy red melamine wall beside the elevator control panel. I was shocked, angry and upset that someone had vandalized not just mine, but also the home of every other resident living in the building.

The following morning I talked with the on-site superintendent and he had already seen the vandalism. He had tried to buff out the scratches, but it only made it look worse. We both assumed it was a visitor with a grudge against Jews and it most likely was just a one-off. The super then sanded out the offensive graffiti and he put up the moving pads until the panel could be replaced. He also confided to me that on a few occasions late at night someone had left small canned fires to burn out in the underground parking area within the vicinity of a couple Jewish residents cars.

The super had not filed a police report which I found rather strange. He told me that it had happened four maybe five times and that all the small fires were contained inside large coffee cans that had just burned themselves out. Other than a bit of soot on the garage’s concrete floor there was no damage done to the property.

And it was from that moment on that I would now become the self-proclaimed Courtney Club Nazi hunter.

The Courtney Club’s lame security system was simply an intercom in the lobby, there was no closed circuit cameras installed anywhere in the building. Most of the newer, higher end condos being built at that time were already installing security cameras with some even having a 24 hour concierge that monitored who was entering and leaving the building.

Within a month after having the elevator panel replaced there were two more incidents of vandalism inside the elevators. It was the same evil Jews must die along with a swastika scratched into the panel which was replaced at a cost of $500 each time. All three times the vandalism had occurred sometime between late Friday night or very early on a Saturday morning. After the three panels were replaced I was now more than ever determined to catch our resident Nazi vandal in action. I was now convinced that it was no longer just a visitor but a renter. Afterall, there was no way an owner would vandalize his own home causing unnecessary repairs that they and all the other owners end up paying for in their monthly maintenance fees.

Would it not be absurd to surmise that it was an owner causing this vandalism?

I became totally fixated on finding this person ASAP. I knew I could not stay up every Friday night riding the elevators waiting for him or her to strike again. There was no doubt in my mind that this Jew hating coward would only strike when nobody else was around so I devised a plan that just might work.

For the next few Fridays after midnight I would take two of the elevators out of service so that only one elevator was working. There would be very little traffic coming or going that late at night. I would sit on a chair in the lobby watching for cars entering the property from the street then driving around the back to the underground garage entrance. Within a couple minutes the single operating elevator would then be summoned to either the P1 or P2 parking levels. I would watch to which floor the elevator would stop at and I would then immediately have the elevator sent back to the lobby to inspect it for any vandalism. By doing this I could easily determine what floor the culprit lived on and what level they parked their car on.

Bonnie thought I was crazy wasting my time playing Lt. Columbo every Friday night sitting in our lobby. After a few weeks I was no closer to finding our resident Nazi and there was also no more vandalism within the building. However, I still wasn’t convinced we had seen our last swastika and then I caught a huge break. On one afternoon there were two police cars at the entrance of the building. I went outside from the lobby only to see Walter a resident who lived on my floor sitting in the back of one of the cruisers.

Apparently Walter who lived alone and for whatever reason had decided to throw his vacuum cleaner out of his window. It had landed about ten feet from where I was now standing. The super called the cops; they arrived quickly and they now had Walter sitting in the backseat. Walter was all disheveled and while nodding his head I could hear him mumbling ‘white supremacist Jews’ to himself over and over. The super told me that a week earlier Walter was so pissed off one night that he had taken a baseball bat to his own car down in the garage after it wouldn’t start.

Was Walter our resident Nazi vandal?

Walter was now my number one suspect, but how could he be?

Afterall Walter was the owner of one of the largest and most expensive units in the building and lived just down the hallway from me. He was an ignorant piece of shit who had once told Bonnie how much he wanted to fuck her while they were alone on the elevator. I was livid when Bonnie told me and I immediately wanted to march down to his apartment and punch him right in the face. Bonnie convinced me not to after she told me he was drunk because he was slurring his words and he reeked of booze.

On one occasion before he verbally accosted my wife Walter had stopped me in the hallway after I had thrown my garbage down the chute. He wanted me to help him lift a heavy box onto a table. I did and I remember his apartment was really nice inside and there were framed diplomas all over the walls. I asked him what all the diplomas were for and he told me that he was a retired Pharmacist. He also rambled on about him being famous and that he had been in the news for gun smuggling, but that the cops had the wrong guy. Rumours that Walter was banging a prominent and wealthy Mississauga developers wife began to swirl around the building. Her green Jaguar sedan was parked quite often overnight in the visitors underground parking just a few spots from where I parked my car.

Hmm.

I now focused my attention solely on my neighbor Walter and on Friday nights I would wander down to the P2 level to see if Walter’s car was parked in his spot. Walter drove an older four door model blue Pontiac with dents on the hood from when he had attacked his car with the bat. If Walter’s car was there then I assumed he was at home and I wouldn’t bother playing Columbo in the lobby that night.

On the first Friday that Walter’s car was not parked in his spot I went and sat in the lobby waiting for him to return not even knowing for sure if he would be returning that night. I remember I was very tired and about to call it a night when a car’s headlights lit up the lobby. The larger four door sedan drove quickly around to the back and I couldn’t see clearly if it was Walter’s car. Within a couple minutes the elevator went down to the P2 level and then went right up to the PH level. I immediately called the elevator back down to the lobby only to find a fresh swastika along with evil Jews must die scratched into the panel. I then went down to the P2 level to see that Walter’s car was now parked in his spot. I walked over to the car and felt the hood, it was still very warm.

I now knew for sure that I had finally caught our resident Courtney Club Nazi.

On Saturday morning I called the cops and two officers came to see Bonnie and me at our condo. They took notes as I relayed to them the complete story that I have shared in this memory. After writing everything down they wanted me to accompany them down to Walter’s apartment to confront him with my serious accusations. I told the officers that there was absolutely no way I would confront Walter to his face because he was a whack job and there was no telling what type of revenge he would incur on me, Bonnie, our condo or our cars. The officers could see that I was visibly upset and told me that they would go talk to Walter without me.

I thanked the officers and watched from my unit as they knocked on Walter’s door. Walter answered and after about five minutes of chatting in the doorway they left and walked back to my apartment. The cops told me that Walter had been caught off guard by their visit and he denied vandalizing the building. They knew he was lying and they issued him a stern warning about any future incidents concerning anti-Semitism within the building. They told him that there little chat would now be on the record and should the vandalism persist then they would be back to pay him another visit.

And just like that there was never another incident of anti-Semitism vandalism at the Courtney Club during the six years Bonnie and I lived there. Although I do think the biggest deterrent was that within a year of Walter’s antics the residents overwhelmingly voted to have closed circuit cameras installed in the lobby and throughout all the common areas of the building. Everything was now recorded and every resident had access to the cameras through their televisions on a private channel.

What really surprised me the most was not just the fact that Walter was an actual owner but how nobody but myself wanted to get involved. The Courtney Club was a brand new 140 unit condominium and it was home to over a couple hundred people who for the most part didn’t really care about what goes on outside of their units.

Before I left the Courtney Club late in 1994 I would become involved with another incident that would see me busting up a busy whore house that was operating on mine and Walter’s floor.

But that would be another story altogether.