Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (25 page)

With minutes to spare, I arrived at the CityNews studio for what would be my second TV interview ever and bumbled my way through it. I’m a fidgeter, and I say “like” and “you know” more times than I should. Donovan is the pro. Just as he was finishing up a radio interview with the CBC, I got a text from a former Ford staffer: “Let’s hope he gets help.”

The city was awake now, and news was getting around. Twitter was, predictably, having a news-junkie meltdown. Ford’s office hadn’t responded, but Doug Ford was on the attack. As I headed into City Hall, Doug was being interviewed by AM640 talk radio host John Oakley.

Oakley: “Do you plan to sue, Doug? … If you feel he’s been maligned unfairly and he’s been slandered, will you launch a lawsuit?”

Ford: “Johnny, that’s their plan, they want to drag us into another lawsuit and then it’s going to be about Rob Ford suing the
Star
for the next two years.…”

Oakley: “But don’t you feel that a lawsuit, the severity of a lawsuit, if you’re confident you would win that, wouldn’t that
finally put to rest any kind of question marks hanging around the mayor or his behaviour? …”

Ford: “… That’s their game.… Make no mistake about it, the
Star
all is part of the same little group that’s going after Rob, the Clayton Rubys of the world, they are all working together.… I’ve never seen Rob drink at any event. Ever.”

About 9:15
A.M.
, the mayor left his Etobicoke home, ignoring the reporters camped out front. At 11
A.M.
he was scheduled to give heavyweight boxing legend George Chuvalo a key to the city. Chuvalo, who had twice taken on Muhammad Ali, now spent his days as an anti-drugs activist. Chuvalo had lost three sons to heroin addiction. After his second son died of an overdose, his wife committed suicide. The famed boxer, who in 1998 was awarded the Order of Canada, now travelled the country sharing his heartbreaking story with student and parent groups. He was also an old family friend of the Fords.

The press gallery was hoping Ford would address the
Star
story before the ceremony. But if precedent was any indication, the mayor was going to make the media ask him about it in front of Chuvalo.

At City Hall, a small army of reporters, photographers, and television crew had assembled outside the mayor’s office. The first few floors of the building are arranged in a big circle. Visitors walk through the front doors, head past the welcome desk, and then the space opens up into a cavernous rotunda. The second and third floors are stacked in rings around this opening. The mayor’s office is at the south end of the second floor, looking out over Nathan Phillips Square, with the councillors’ offices spread out around the rest of the loop. The set-up means you can always get a good idea of what’s happening in
the main building. I stood on the ground floor and watched the press mob every passing councillor, asking for comment. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday told reporters he had never seen Ford drink.

The mayor’s black Escalade pulled up to City Hall about 10
A.M.
Dozens of reporters crowded around the elevator in front of his office. When the doors slid open, an aide rushed forward to clear the way. Ford stepped out wearing a fixed smile, his eyes trained on the floor.

“Mayor!”

“Mayor Ford, were you kicked out of the Garrison event?”

“Do you have an alcohol problem?”

“Any comment on these allegations?”

Ford shook his head. “It’s nonsense,” he said, before disappearing behind his office door.

Ford’s press secretary, George Christopoulos, finally gave a statement: “For the record, the mayor was not asked to leave the gala.”

Come 11
A.M.
, the throng of reporters moved to the members’ lounge behind the council chamber for the Chuvalo ceremony. To one side, black-and-white photos of the boxer in his heyday flashed across a screen. Rows of chairs were in front of the podium. Chuvalo was looking handsome in a dark suit, his grey hair slicked back at the sides James Dean style. He looked much younger than seventy-five. Some of Chuvalo’s family, including his second wife, Joanne, were in the crowd. The occasion was feeling awkward. Chuvalo deserved the huge turnout, but with Ford still not properly addressing the
Star
’s story, most reporters were there for the mayor, not the boxer.

When Ford emerged from behind a blue curtain, his forehead
was dripping with sweat, as it often is. He walked to the podium as if it were any other day.

“George, I want to thank you for being a friend to our family,” he said. “I know my dad’s up there, wishing he could be here. I know you’ve helped out many of us. And it’s my pleasure now to present you with a key to the City of Toronto.”

He handed Chuvalo a long flat box with a gold key inside. They posed for a photo, shook hands, and briefly embraced. Chuvalo said a few words.

Then it was time for questions. The
Star
’s City Hall bureau chief, David Rider, asked the question no one else wanted to: “Mayor Ford, can you address the story in the
Star
this morning?”

Predictably, Ford looked furious.

“You know what, guys, this is about George Chuvalo,” he said. “If you wanna address this, number one it’s an outright lie. It’s the
Toronto Star
going after me, again, and again, and again. They’re relentless. That’s fine. I’ll go head to head with the
Toronto Star
any time.”

He was not going to address any of the specifics. He was not going to talk about the Bier Markt, or his staff’s concerns, or the photos on Twitter. Ford retreated to his comfort zone— campaigning—framing the
Star
as a political opponent rather than a newspaper.

“Just let’s wait, let’s just wait until the election … and then we’ll see what happens,” he fumed, getting more and more worked up with each passing sentence. “I’m sick of— It’s patho— It’s just lies after lies and lies! And I’ve called you pathological liars and you are! So why don’t you take me to court?” Ford paused as if to consider his own suggestion, then, apparently deciding it was in fact a good idea, puffed out his chest
and added, “Let the courts decide. You guys are liars. It’s about George Chuvalo today, guys. Have some respect.”

The Fords were always being asked why they didn’t sue for libel if the
Star
was lying. Now the mayor was flipping it around. If he was wrong in calling the
Star
liars, why didn’t they sue
him
? It seemed like a clever strategy. Ford Nation was going to eat that up, I thought. And at the end of the day, winning over the public was what mattered.

Later that day at City Hall, two councillors broke their silence on the long-held concerns about the mayor’s health.

Councillor Joe Mihevc, who despite leaning to the left had a friendly relationship with the Ford administration, told 680News, “I think many of us have witnessed things that the
Toronto Star
has reported.” Mihevc said he was worried about the city and about the mayor himself. “There is clearly some work that he needs to do. It is simply not accurate that the whole world is lying.”

Well-liked rookie councillor Sarah Doucette—a progressive whom Doug Ford had described as one of his favourite councillors—told the
Star
, “It has been known at City Hall for quite a while that he may have a drinking problem.” Doucette clarified that she had personally never seen anything, but that some of her colleagues had witnessed the mayor appearing impaired at “festivals, galas and other events” during the past year. “In some respects, I wish this had gotten out earlier, because if he needs help, please do it now,” she said.

After the
Star
posted Doucette’s comments online, the
National Post
tried to talk to her. “Ms. Doucette confirmed making the statement,” it reported, “but refused to repeat it to the
Post
and other media outlets later in the day, after members
of the mayor’s staff left her City Hall office.” She had been advised to keep quiet.

The usual suspects were slamming the
Star
on talk radio and Twitter, but otherwise reaction seemed fair. The CBC confirmed a big component of the
Star
’s story—that staff in Ford’s office wanted the mayor to go to rehab.

Paul Ainslie was having a harder time.
The Globe and Mail
quoted a Ford ally questioning Ainslie’s motives for saying what he had. Councillor Mike Del Grande called it “sour grapes” because the administration had not made Ainslie chair of the budget committee. The
Toronto Sun
printed something similar. Ford’s chief of staff, Mark Towhey, told the
Globe
, “No one asked the mayor to leave and no one asked me to ask the mayor to leave.” Ainslie stuck by his comments.

With all the interviews and press scrums that day, around the time I should have been eating dinner I realized I had missed lunch. It was getting late, and the editors still weren’t sure what the main Ford story would be the next day. Then Garrison Ball co-chair Mark McQueen decided for us.

Six members of the thirteen-person Garrison Ball committee—not including Ainslie or the military personnel— signed a letter stating, “As a civilian member of the volunteer organizing committee of the 2013 Toronto Garrison Ball, I can confirm that I did not ask Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto, to leave the event on February 23, 2013, for any reason. To my knowledge, no member of the event’s organizing committee, including Councillor Paul Ainslie, directed the Mayor to leave the event that night.”

One of the signatories later told me it felt like an attempt to smoke out the
Star
’s sources by seeing if anyone refused to
sign. Except the wording of the letter missed the point; no one had directly asked Ford to leave. It was Towhey whom Ainslie had spoken with, and everyone knew that. Ainslie had publicly said so in the
Star
that morning. Given that, the wording of the letter seemed duplicitous. Organizers signed it feeling that technically it wasn’t a lie. That nuance seemed to escape the public. On Twitter—an unscientific real-time gauge of public opinion— people seemed to be taking the committee’s letter as some sort of proof that the
Star
story was off-base. Even some mainstream print and TV outlets were reporting on the letter in a way that suggested our story had been refuted. The facts were on our side, but the perception seemed to be that we’d gotten it wrong.

With deadline fast approaching, Donovan and I went back to our sources. It turned out Ainslie had sent out a statement of his own to the committee after our investigation. At the last possible moment, the
Star
got its hands on the email.

I think it’s safe to say I was the only person who spoke with Mayor’s Chief of Staff Mark Towhey. This was after being approached by @ least 8 people who were concerned about the Mayor’s state.

I spoke briefly with the Mayor to see if there were any issues. He seemed to be somewhat incoherent. I told Mark Towhey, “I think it would be a good idea for the Mayor to leave.”

I’m not aware of anyone else speaking to Mark Towhey.

I know it was me who pushed to have the Mayor attend the Ball. I’m very embarrassed about the media attention which the event has received.

With Ainslie’s unequivocal admission that he’d asked the mayor’s staff to get Ford to leave the Garrison Ball because people felt he was impaired, the
Star
was able to push the story forward again on Wednesday’s front page.

Ford showed up at City Hall at noon and refused to answer any questions.

ELEVEN

FOR

SALE

L
ast call had come and gone when twenty-one-year-old Anthony Smith and a nineteen-year-old friend left Loki Lounge in downtown Toronto on March 28, 2013. The popular nightclub in the King Street West bar district was the kind of place where men wore sunglasses inside, women teetered on heels they couldn’t walk in, and most of the furniture was upholstered in velvet.

Smith and his friend had known each other since they were about ten years old. They used to play on the same basketball team. Now, according to police, they were both members of the Dixon City Bloods street gang.

At 2:30
A.M.
, they crossed to the north side of the street. The gunshots came out of nowhere.

A bullet went through the back of Smith’s head. His friend was hit in the arm and back. When the sun came up, two crimson pools of blood were still on the sidewalk. Smith was pronounced dead before the morning was over. The friend barely survived.

Four days later, my cell phone rang just after 9
A.M.
It was a man named Mohamed Farah. He wanted to meet.

“I have some information I think you’d like to see,” he said. “It’s about a prominent Toronto politician.”

IT WAS AROUND NOON
on Easter Monday. I was standing on a soccer field in a west-end Toronto park, talking on the phone to the
Star
’s editor-in-chief, Michael Cooke. Farah was waiting out of earshot on a nearby bench, holding his iPad.

“He says they want a hundred thousand dollars,” I told Cooke. “I tried to explain that’s a completely crazy number, but he seems set on it.”

“Can you bring him to the newsroom?” Cooke asked.

Farah offered to drive. He was parked in an alley behind a Starbucks. I had three seconds to weigh the pros and cons of going with him or taking a cab. Pro: I could see his licence plate, run a check, and get his name and address. Con: I was alone, and any idiot knew not to get in a car with a stranger. Pro: It would build trust, provided he wasn’t a rapist. Con: He might be a rapist.

“Sure, that’d be great if you could drive,” I said.

The moment I spotted Farah’s black sedan, I sent Cooke an email with a description of the vehicle and the plate number— just in case. I climbed into the passenger side. The car was clean and obviously quite new. I didn’t see a scrap of trash.