Rob Ford Stadium would be ground zero
Renamed kids’ football field in Etobicoke would have been a magnet, a memory trigger
Toronto Mayor John Tory says he’s surprised by city councillors’ angry reaction to his idea of a renamed Rob Ford Memorial Stadium. So am I. It never occurred to me that council would vote the proposal down, which they did 11-24.
I assumed they would do what I call a “municipal planting,” taking the path of greatest mediocrity, sentimentality and cheapskate vote-luring, like the eye-wateringly expensive one-stop Scarborough subway or the decision to hang on to the Gardiner Expressway instead of vaporizing it.
“Municipal plantings” are those cheap standard flower beds in Toronto’s public parks. Are the colours lurid and unknown to nature? Check. Spiky plants? Check. Foliage that looks like lichen? Check. Regimented placement? Check.
But instead council revolted and said the decent thing: no.
At this point my most recent memory of the late mayor had been of his rare, terrible cancer and his sad death. Rob Ford Memorial Stadium, though, would have been a touchstone for other memories, ones that even Ford himself might have been too drunk or drugged up to recall.
That renamed kids’ football field in Etobicoke would have been a magnet, a memory trigger. Whenever it was mentioned, we’d recall a man who drove drunk, smoked crack, cast foul slurs on gays and people with dark skin, publicly referred to his wife in the crudest sexual terms, wandered around Toronto in an alcoholic stupor and was an international laughing stock. And that’s me toning it down.
I don’t know why Mayor Tory listened when the Ford family repeatedly asked him for this favour.
“In all of my dealings as mayor ... I try to be generous and to put politics to the side,” Tory told council, saying he was “erring on the side of generosity.”
But it was political, and may even have been smart. He was putting politics front and centre, hoping to cosy up to Ford supporters while doing nothing substantive for them.
As the Star’s David Rider reported, Doug Ford certainly thought it was a political deal. According to him, Rob Ford was nice to the Layton family when NDP leader Jack Layton died, so Ward 19 councillor Mike Layton (Jack’s son) should be equally nice to the Fords and vote for the name.
As usual, Ford doesn’t even recognize what an insult this is to the Layton family. He thinks politics is at the New Jersey level, with men greasily hurling deals back and forth. He sees councillors as power nodes he can switch on or off.
Most Toronto voters, particularly women, don’t want to honour a misogynist. Very few voters want to honour racism or drunk driving. So why cater to the minority who do?
Toronto is a civilized city. We may have clogged roads, a risible subway system whose map looks like two pickup sticks, a mass failure of esthetic judgment and a parkless condo-ized waterfront.
I was always intrigued by the notion of “failed states,” a political concept since the ‘90s, but much argued over since then. The phrase upsets nations as much as “failed high school” alarms parents.
A failed state is chaotic, incapable of sustaining itself, needs intervention. At what point does a city become a smaller more intense version of this, disorganized, lawless, stalled?
Rob Ford Memorial Stadium would have been the starting point. If Doug Ford runs for mayor next year, we’ll see it continue. He will enliven the chaotic elements of Toronto, empower and encourage them, just as Donald Trump has done to his country.
If we honoured Rob Ford, what next? Why not give Jian Ghomeshi an honorary municipal planting? He was popular before he wasn’t. We don’t because it would be in bad taste. It would stall moral recovery from the Ford years and lower the standards of public life, which are fairly low.
Something is sliding beneath our feet. It may just be the proximity of the U.S., a failing state - they’re just over the lake, you know - but more than ever, we need peace, order and good government.
That is not too much to ask.