Ivor Tossell - The Gift of Ford: Rob Ford: How Torontos Unlikeliest Man Became its Most Notorious Mayor

Hazlitt Originals

A new series of original, commissioned e-books of varying length and subject matter, featuring both established and emerging authors from around the world. From investigative journalism and fiction, to travelogues, polemics, and interactive tablet creations, Hazlitt Originals aspire to push the boundaries of story form.

Titles in the series

Braking Bad: Chasing Lance Armstrong and the Cancer of Corruption, by Richard Poplak

The Gift of Ford: How Torontos Unlikeliest Man Became its Most Notorious Mayor, by Ivor Tossell

You Arent What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture, by Steven Poole

The Man Who Went to War: A Reporters Memoir from Libya and the Arab Uprising, by Patrick Graham

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

Copyright 2012 Ivor Tossell

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2012 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

www.randomhouse.ca

Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Tossell, Ivor
The gift of Ford [electronic resource] / Ivor Tossell.

An e-book original.
Electronic monograph in HTML format.

eISBN: 978-0-345-81257-5

1. Ford, Rob, 1969. 2. MayorsOntarioTorontoBiography. 3. Toronto (Ont.)Politics and government21st century. 4. Toronto (Ont.)Biography. I. Title.

FC3097.26.F67T67 2012 971.354105092 C2012-904273-0

Cover design: Michle Champagne
Cover photo Christopher Drost

v3.1

It was the eighth of May, 2012, and the mayor of Toronto did not have a good day ahead of him. Already, he was once again late for his weigh-in. No fewer than six television cameras and several dozen reporters milled around the cordon outside his office. The reporters had begun to photograph each other to pass the time. The mayors old-style carnival scale, festooned in campaign colours, sat where it had been maneuvered into place outside the glass doors to his suite.

After a string of very public setbacks at the end of 2011, losing weight had become the mayors signature policy initiative. The weight-loss challenge was devised as a new years PR stunt, a charity event that would make the big mayor more relatable to the little guy. The weigh-ins had become something of a weekly ritual; for reporters, they represented a rare opportunity to shout a few questions at a chief magistrate who rarely spoke to the press.

This weigh-in, however, was of particular interest: It was Fords first time at City Hall since his latest altercation. A few days earlier, a young Toronto Star reporter had turned up in the public parkland behind the mayors house. The reporter, Daniel Dale, was working on a story about the mayors attempts to buy a patch of adjoining land, and had gone to see it for himself. Alerted by a neighbour, Ford emerged from his house like an angry, 330-pound hornet, rushing Dale with his fist cocked, hollering at the young reporter until, also hollering, Dale dropped his BlackBerry and voice recorder and fled.

For the days that followed, the city was transfixed by the unfolding he-screamed/he-screamed drama. It was a Rob Ford special: That pungent brew of class warfare, property rights, personal grievance, and high drama that had little to do with running a city of 2.5 million people.

The mayor spent the weekend trash-talking Dale into every talk-radio mic he could find, and demanded that the Star remove Dale from the City Hall beat. The Star refused, and, evidently relishing every minute of the drama, ran a small armada of articles in its own defense, including two first-person missives by Dale, columns, editorials, an editorial cartoon, and at least two elaborate infographics that might as well have documented the exploits of Seal Team Six. The mayor retorted that he wouldnt take part in any press scrum that involved the Star, the countrys highest-circulation newspaper. This did not stick.

The work-week back underway, Daniel Dale returned to City Hall to face the mayor of the fifth-largest city in North America as he publicly weighed himself on an industrial-strength scale.

The mayors staff told the milling crowd that the mayor was busy being briefed, which led to some confusion when Ford emerged from an elevator that led to the parking garage. Ford darted past Dale into his office. Some minutes passed before the office doors opened again. The mayor who, days earlier, was chasing a reporter around parkland to the tune of Yaketty Sax had morphed into a shy, stammering man, now barely glancing up at the cameras. He would be back to bellicosity within hours; this was just Fords way.

He musta lost weight! said Doug Ford, the mayors brother, as they entered. Not at all, not at all, said the mayor, under his breath, and beetled directly from his office door to the weigh-scale. He stood, back to the cameras, as it informed him hed gained another four pounds. Then he beetled straight back into his office, somehow managing to keep his back to reporters the whole time. His brother, on the other hand, tried to make a bit of a show of it, taking off his shoes and tie and belt to save weight, but his timing was off. Before anyone knew what was going on, hed deposited a pile of clothing accessories at his feet, and was stuck answering reporters questions about the debacle as he reassembled himself.

Meanwhile, behind the cordon, one city councillor after anotherleft, right, and centrewas taking the opportunity to give the blinking Dale a series of meaningful hugs. Upstairs, more news crews were setting up their cameras for the council session. A giant statue of Ai Weiwei had appeared behind the council floor. Two people dressed as bananas were wandering around, giving out fair trade chocolates.

It was Tuesday at Toronto City Hall.

After a year and half of Rob Fords mayoralty, the surreal had become the status quo. Every time Toronto seemed to have gone irrevocably through the looking glass, it found another looking glass somewhere in there and went right through that one, too. It was getting like Inception in there. Toronto was discovering at great length and considerable expense what happens when a city elects a populist who can fulminate, but not govern. A very young, very large, very loud councillor from the suburbs, Ford had spent ten years on the political fringes. He was a blustering opponent of any and all spending, a champion of the little guy who just wanted his tax dollars to work for him. He was also notorious for his wild outbursts, which over the years alienated his colleagues, rallied his partisans, and amused his talk-radio listeners.

Fords successful mayoral run, built on the simple phrase Respect for Taxpayers, T-boned the citys establishment. Toronto had seen populists come and go, but never one so wild, so single-minded, who paid so little lip service to the traditions of governance. At his ceremonial inauguration, at the exact moment when a conventional politician would have been mumbling platitudes about cooperation, Ford turned the microphone over to hockey commentator Don Cherry, who proceeded to trash the mayors political opponents as bike-riding pinkos. So it was that Mayor Rob Ford, wearing his ceremonial chains, entered office.