This magnificent French château-style mansion on Toronto's Millionaires' Row played host to world-famous VIPs. It was even once Canada's most expensive home.

Yet its fortunes took a turn for the worse when the property was abandoned and left to languish, before being unceremoniously razed to the ground in the summer of 2022.

Click or scroll on to take a look around the doomed mansion prior to its demolition and discover the secret lurking in its basement... 

Built for a financier and real estate mogul who went on to lose his entire business empire, the lavish home followed a similar trajectory. 

In July 2022, photographer Dave of Freaktography.com headed to the Bridle Path, Toronto's Millionaires' Row. He uncovered the forgotten gem hidden beneath the undergrowth.

He documented this ill-fated mansion in its final months. As you can see from this image taken by him that summer, the property's grounds were unkempt, with the hedges overgrown and weeds poking up through the paving on the driveway.

The lawn was in desperate need of cutting and ivy was threatening to envelop the mansion, having already covered many of the windows across the front façade. Yet the 30,000-square-foot property appeared structurally sound, with everything from the glass window panes to the grand front door intact.

The property's first surprise is its age. While the structure may have looked hundreds of years old thanks to its faux French Renaissance architecture, the mansion was only built in 1985.

The stately 10-bedroom, 14-bathroom estate was commissioned by hotshot financier and real estate mogul Robert Campeau. 

Campeau wanted his dream home to look like a 17th-century French château and the architects and builders didn't disappoint. They fulfilled the brief with a fine reproduction that would look at home in Provence.

Campeau's well-heeled neighbours were reportedly aghast at the extravagance of the property magnate, who snapped up two enormous plots on the exclusive street and demolished the existing houses to build his trophy home.

Toronto high society was buzzing with tales of the mansion's grandeur and its starry guests, who are said to have included former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Hollywood legend Jane Fonda and Scandal star Tony Goldwyn.

Visitors were no doubt wowed when they entered the mansion and came upon its galleried and domed grand foyer, which still looked to be in good shape that summer. Campeau had plenty of money back in the 1980s to splash on the property as his company once controlled major US department chains including Macy's and Bloomingdale's.

A decade later, the real estate baron's overleveraged business empire, worth around CA$10 billion ($7.2bn/£5.6bn) at its height according to Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, totally collapsed.

Deb riddled by the 1990s, the company reported losses of CA$2 billion ($1.4bn/£1.1bn) and Campeau was fired. The crestfallen tycoon quit Canada for Austria and his mansion languished until later that decade, when he finally sold it.

In 2002, the property was bought for CA$7.5 million ($5.4m/£4.2m) by Harold and Sara Springer. The couple enlisted a top heritage architect and leading designer to renovate the interiors. That included reviving the grand foyer in a 17th-century baroque style complementing the building's architecture.

They adorned it with mirrors dating back to the French Revolution, a marble Louis XV fireplace, Bergère chairs and Sèvres porcelain.

The sunken great room next to the grand foyer was also in a good state of repair when Dave of Freaktography.com toured the mansion in the summer of 2022.

The sublime space gave the adjacent grand foyer a run for its money, with ornate wood panelling and plasterwork, a marble fireplace and shining parquet flooring that's absolutely exquisite.

The gourmet chef's kitchen didn't appear to have been used properly in a long while when Dave paid it a visit, but apart from some dust gathering here and there, the room doesn't look too bad at all in this photo.

The high-end cream cabinets, fancy extractor hood and built-in refrigerator probably would have been as good as new after a thorough clean.

The Springers furnished the room with an antique table and chairs, oil paintings in gilded frames and an oval Persian rug. A property of this stature would have had a formal dining room too. Of course, that's the next stop on our tour.

The dining room looked almost pristine in its abandoned state. The plasterwork on the ceiling was immaculate and there was barely a scratch on the parquet flooring, which doesn't come cheap. The floor-length curtains and matching pelmets left by the Springers were spotless too.

Needless to say, they didn't leave behind the dining table and chairs, crystal chandelier and other valuable antiques when they eventually vacated the property in 2020.

First on the market in 2014 through Barry Cohen Homes with an asking price of CA$25 million ($17.9m/£14m) a sale sadly never came to fruition.

The Springers listed the mansion again in 2017 for a whopping CA$35 million ($25m/£19.7m), making the Bridle Path gem Canada's most expensive home for sale at the time. 

The property was finally sold in 2020 for the knock-down price of CA$30.8 million ($22m/£17.3m) to Nascond Holdings, reported the US news outlet New York Post.

Harold Springer must have found it especially hard to bid farewell to the library, said to be his favourite room. The wood-panelled room was warm and inviting when the Springers inhabited it. Every item in the space down to the finest detail was either from the 17th century or a perfectly replicated antique from the period.

A curious detail by a normal home's standard, but perhaps not for one this unique, was the charming recreation of a Parisian street in the ground-floor corridor.

One of the couple's most fabulous additions, the murals of traditional French shopfronts and the sky vista on the ceiling added a quirky touch to the property, to say the least.

Here's hoping the tiny town was salvaged before the mansion's demolition.

Moving upstairs, the gallery landing is really quite something. The mansion was actually used as a location for several movies, including Kissinger and Nixon and the Olsen Twins' flick It Takes Two from 1995, as well as the 1997 film That Old Feeling starring Bette Midler. 

In 2013, the property was even reportedly featured in an episode of the hit TV show Suits.

One of six bedrooms, the large master suite included a mirrored dressing space, jumbo walk-in wardrobe and this spacious bathroom.

The room was decked out with a clawfoot bathtub with taps reportedly made from solid gold. It's more likely they were merely plated in the precious metal, but nonetheless a decadent feature.

Note the beautiful round stained-glass window. With its wealth of quality unique features, this mansion was definitely a cut above.

A handsome oak spiral staircase connected the master suite with one of the property's most spectacular amenities, the Olympic-sized swimming pool. The cavernous room in which it sat doubled up as the mansion's ballroom.

The 50-foot (15m) pool was covered over with a retractable floor for glam soirées. We can just imagine hundreds of guests mingling beneath the space's dramatic vaulted ceiling.

One of the more unusual features in the mansion was this bizarre-looking contraption in the corner of the pool room. Called an Aeratone bath, it was used for Balneotherapy, a type of water-based massage therapy.

Invented in 1938, the curious device was a precursor to the Jacuzzi but it used compressed air rather than jets to work its magic.

The basement is the next port of call on our tour of the property. The subterranean level was packed with amenities, from the pool changing rooms and sauna to a rec room and a walk-in fridge. But that's not all...

The most jaw-dropping feature beneath the ground was the mansion's bunker. Encased in concrete, the fallout shelter had a living room and dorm and was fully self-sufficient, with its own generator, battery and infrastructure.

The owners rested safe in the knowledge they had somewhere to hunker down if a nuclear war, zombie apocalypse or other Armageddon-like scenario came to pass.

That said, the bunker was relatively spartan, especially compared with the rest of the mansion. Simple white tiles lined the walls and the amenities looked to have been extremely basic.

Dave at Freaktrography.com has speculated the shelter was built for regular guest and former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Another curious claim about the mansion is that it was blessed by former Toronto archbishop Cardinal Gerald Emmett Carter according to real estate news outlet Storeys.com.

Whether this is true or not, the property certainly wasn't endowed with divine favour, given its ultimate demolition.

The mansion was demolished in August 2022, two years after it changed hands. While the estate looked in a reasonable condition, despite standing empty for some time, its valuable plot in one of Toronto's most exclusive neighbourhoods was likely the main draw for the buyer.

As of 2024, the lot was in the process of being replaced with a flashy pad conceived by Ferris Rafauli, who shared a video of the home's demolition on Instagram.

Rafauli is the superstar designer behind Canadian musician Drake's 50,000-square-foot (4,645sqm) mansion, just down the road.

In November 2024, Rafauli shared an Instagram video giving a tour of the site. The clip simply captioned "What's next..." shows the enormous area clear of all demolition debris.

A construction crew appear hard at work, seemingly reshaping the site with diggers and reinforcing the perimeter walls. The video also gives a sneak peek at what the new mansion may look like once it's finished...

The designer and master builder shared black and white video renders, presumably revealing the design of the grand home that will eventually take shape on the previously abandoned lot. 

While we don't yet know who'll get to enjoy the new home's breathtaking entryway and elaborate façade, we can't wait to find out. One thing's for sure: just like its predecessor, this home will likely host some of Canada's biggest names.

So, while the legendary château's fabric may have been reduced to dust, its legacy lives on, cemented in Toronto's folklore.

After all, who could forget the mysterious, glittering estate that entertained presidents, A-list stars and high society, not to mention harboured a secret nuclear bunker in its basement? 

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