The infamous Rob Ford is on the brink of another moment.
Former mayor’s fans brave the cold for annual Ford Fest event
On Friday, the first cold October evening of the year, Iris Brummel-Wilkinson, 81, left her home in Scarborough to travel across the city, on public transit in rush-hour traffic, to a small wedge of grass next to a Sears parking lot in Etobicoke. Once there, she joined a long line that snaked past several carnival rides. She waited patiently, for more than 30 minutes, then picked up a black T-shirt with red and blue lettering from a cardboard box. “Ford Fest,” it said, “Rocks Toronto.”
Several hours later, as she waited for her ride home, Brummel-Wilkinson reflected on the man she had come here to meet. Rob Ford “is a blessed man,” she said. And then, in a comment on his somewhat miraculous health, added, “He looks like a teenager.”
Eleven months after John Tory won Toronto’s mayoralty, ushering in an age of waspish calm at City Hall, Canada’s largest city is on the brink of another Rob Ford moment. On Friday night, more than a thousand people braved the coldest evening of the new autumn to pick up Ford T-shirts and eat free food at the annual Ford Fest BBQ.
At the end of October, meanwhile, two new books about Ford are set to hit the shelves, with at least one promising new and potentially embarrassing details about the man whose drinking and drug use so recently plunged the city into a years-long political farce.
None of that seemed to matter Friday, though. The Ford Fest crowd was smaller than it has been in recent years. But those who were there professed the same love for their man they always have.
“He means well for the people,” said Patricia Reyes, who came to Ford Fest with her baby. “I honestly think he cares about all of us.”
Reyes had already at that point waded through the deep huddle that surrounded Ford to get her photo taken with the former mayor. She said she didn’t care about his history of crack use or drunken antics. Even when he was mayor, she said, she never believed he let his addiction affect his job.
If anyone would know if that’s true, it’s Mark Towhey, one of Ford’s many former chiefs of staff. Towhey’s book, Uncontrollable: How I tried to help the world’s most notorious mayor, is due out Oct. 27. The contents are being closely guarded by the publisher. But Ford fired Towhey in the midst of his crack-cocaine crisis, so it seems almost certain the book will rehash — and perhaps even reveal more about — the worst moments of Ford’s dark, brief mayoralty.
The other new Ford book, by city councillor and former journalist John Filion, takes a different tack. In excerpts mailed to journalists in September, Filion reveals a deep fascination with and genuine sense of affection for his longtime colleague. Filion says he doesn’t doubt reports of what he calls “Ford’s monstrously bad behaviour.” (How could he, with so many of them caught on tape?) But he also likes Ford, and feels for him, most of the time.
The question both books seem set to spark is: Does Rob Ford matter any more? He’s still a member of city council. He shows up there and speaks like he always has: against spending and expenses and really almost anything his colleagues propose. But for shear, brash obstructionism, he doesn’t stand out like he once did. Compared to longtime foil Giorgio Mammoliti and newcomer Jim Karygiannis, he almost comes off as tame.
There’s also the question of his health. After enduring 27 days of radiation and five rounds of chemotherapy, Ford underwent surgery to remove a large cancerous tumour in May. He returned to work this summer, but he’s still suffering the side effects. Every morning a nurse comes to his house, unwraps a huge bandage that stretches from his chest to his groin, and sucks out the fluid that has built up inside his torso over the past 24 hours.
(Fluid buildup is the reason Ford has taken to wearing track suits to city council. “It’s just easier to put on and go to the washroom and all that,” he said in an interview this week.)
As for his other looming health issue, Ford insists he hasn’t had a drink or done drugs in 18 months. He also says he now takes full responsibility for the actions — crack-smoking, drunkenness and all the rest — that led city council to strip him of most of his mayoral power. “I was in a different frame of mind then,” he said. “Like I said, I went to rehab for a couple of months, learned a lot about my addiction, and you know what? I’m moving on.”
Ford’s acceptance has its limits, though. He still blames former police chief Bill Blair — who he calls “the worst chief ” in Toronto history — for investigating his actions and those of his entourage during the crack scandal.
As for his own political future, Ford has all but admitted he plans to run for mayor in three years. He called Tory “disingenuous with the voters” and accused him of doing “absolutely nothing” during his first year in office. “I just can’t wait until 2018,” Ford said.
Back at Ford Fest Friday night, Chuck Konkel, a federal Conservative candidate in Scarborough, was wandering the crowd, meeting voters. “We could all take political lessons from Rob Ford, no matter what your political stripe, because Rob Ford seems to be everyman, in many ways, and everywoman,” he said.
“I think Rob,” he continued, “speaks to those people who stand in lineups at five in the morning at the bus stop, do their job and go home and feed their kids.”
Brummel-Wilkinson, wearing her new Ford Fest T-shirt, agreed. “He’s a wonderful man,” she said. “He always tried to help us.”
He means well for the people. I honestly think he cares about all of us