Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (35 page)

The mayor switched to offence mode. The Fords’ long-time lawyer, Dennis Morris, got involved. Together, they publicly called on Chief Blair to release the footage. It was a curious strategy. Given what I’d seen six months earlier, I couldn’t imagine that the mayor actually wanted that made public. Perhaps they were gambling on the fact that Blair wouldn’t make the video public because it would taint Lisi’s extortion trial, and that Blair’s refusal would create enough doubt for Ford Nation to stick with the mayor. Maybe they figured that if Lisi pleaded guilty, the video would never get entered into evidence, and therefore never be released. Or perhaps they were trying to run out the clock, to make it to the October 2014 election before a trial date. On all fronts, it was a weak plan. My police sources were insisting that there was no way the footage would be buried.

By Friday afternoon, it looked as if Ford was coming to his senses. The entire family—Doug, Randy, Rob, Kathy, and
Diane, as well as the mayor’s chief of staff, Earl Provost—had a long meeting at the Ford family home in Etobicoke. When Ford came outside, reporters were waiting on the cul-de-sac. By now, Detective Sergeant Gary Giroux had confirmed that police wanted to interview the mayor but that he wasn’t cooperating.

Saturday was quiet. There was rampant speculation that on the brothers’ Sunday radio show, Rob Ford would announce plans to take some time off and get medical treatment. I was skeptical. It would be entirely out of character.

He didn’t let me down.

Ford pulled up to Newstalk 1010’s studio blaring the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” from his black Escalade. As the show began, two of Ford’s staff members brought the media coffee and Timbit doughnuts. The Brothers Ford marched into the studio holding prepared speeches, looking ready for battle.

“Chief, I’m asking you to release this video, now,” Rob Ford said, his voice strong and direct. “Toronto residents deserve to see it. And people need to judge for themselves what they see on this video. Friends, I’m the first one to admit, I am not perfect. I have made mistakes. I have made mistakes, and all I can do right now is apologize for the mistakes. I sincerely, sincerely apologize.”

Exactly what he was apologizing for wasn’t clear. Ford mentioned the night he was “hammered” on the Danforth as something he regretted. He apologized for texting while driving. He said things had gotten “out of control” on St. Patrick’s Day 2012. But when Toronto residents phoned in later in the show and asked the mayor point-blank about his drug use, Ford dodged the questions. He said he couldn’t comment on the video. In the end, the mayor promised to cut back on his drinking, but he
said it was unrealistic to think he’d never have a drink again. Brother Doug chimed in, “You’re going to curb your drinking, especially in public.… You can stay in your basement, have a few pops.”

Ford tried to avoid reporters on his way out of Newstalk, but we were waiting in the parking garage. At first, Ford relayed through a security guard that if we didn’t leave, he’d call the police. Newstalk 1010 had invited us into the building to cover the show, so we weren’t leaving. After a short standoff, Ford walked into the garage flanked by two staff members.

It was like a mob. I was blinded by camera flashes.

As he walked past, I shouted, “Mayor Ford, have you ever smoked crack cocaine?”

Then someone else said, “Mayor Ford, have you ever smoked crack cocaine?”

A third: “Mayor Ford, do you have an addiction problem?”

A fourth: “Mayor Ford, have you ever smoked crack cocaine?”

He peeled out of the driveway fast enough that several of us had to jump out of the way.

The pressure didn’t let up the next week, and on Tuesday Doug Ford made it worse, essentially accusing Chief Bill Blair of being part of the
Toronto Star
conspiracy against his brother. The mayor wouldn’t be resigning, but Doug Ford thought Blair should.

“[Blair] believes that he’s the judge, the jury, and the executioner,” he said on AM640’s
John Oakley Show
. “He wanted to go out and put a political bullet right between the mayor’s eyes, and thought that would be the final bullet to knock the mayor off, and he showed his cards—he thought he had a royal flush and … he has a couple of pairs of deuces,” Doug said. “I think
personally—this is just Doug Ford’s opinion—he needs to step down until the probe is done, and there’s obviously a bias right now, moving forward in this city, with a police chief against the mayor of this city.”

Afterwards, Doug Ford headed to Ryerson University for a pre-scheduled talk with journalism students about how the media had it in for his family. He told the students how I’d stalked his elderly mother. How I and some of my other colleagues would hide in the bushes at the family’s cottage, behind the mayor’s house, sometimes in his backyard. He presented these allegations as fact.

Around the time Doug Ford’s lecture got to the subject of the
Star
vendetta, Rob Ford drove his Escalade into the parking lot of City Hall and had a brainwave. He phoned his chief of staff.

“I’m going to blow their minds” was all he said.

As had been the case for the last week, dozens of reporters were waiting outside Ford’s office. By chance, I happened to be there that morning. Ford walked off the elevator, a funny expression on his face. When someone asked him why Doug was doing all the talking, Ford stopped and turned to us, which was unusual.

“You guys have asked me a question. You asked me a question back in May, and you can repeat that question.”

We looked around at each other. What was he talking about? Someone asked about the video.

“You asked me a couple questions,” Ford said, “and what were those questions?”

Jackson Proskow from Global News asked, “Do you smoke crack cocaine?”

Ford looked right at him. “Exactly! Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But, no, do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.”

I nearly dropped my tape recorder. Did I just hallucinate? I looked around at my colleagues. We all had our mouths open.

“I answered your question,” continued Ford. “You ask the question properly, I’ll answer it.… So, I wasn’t lying. You didn’t ask the correct questions.”

The mayor walked away shortly after.

Even Ford’s confession was not wholly truthful. He had been asked dozens of times if he’d
ever
smoked crack. And the
Star
now knew that the video was filmed in February 2013. So unless he wasn’t smoking crack out of that glass vial, that too did not add up. Again, Ford wanted to wipe the slate clean with an apology.

THE SPEED AT WHICH THINGS
unravelled from there was stunning. Every day became more surreal than the previous one. With his admission, Ford lost every friend at city council. It wasn’t just the hard drug use. It was the lying. The mayor could no longer be trusted. And worst of all: he was refusing to do the dignified thing and step aside.

“I think he’s lost the moral authority to lead,” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong that same Tuesday. “We’re in uncharted territory.”

Minnan-Wong began investigating ways to censure the mayor. Left-wing councillor John Filion drew up a series of
motions to strip the mayor of his power. A council that had been bitterly divided for the last three years suddenly found itself working towards a common goal. People put aside partisan differences and began talking about what was best for the city, how to protect its image and the integrity of its local government.

Meanwhile, reporters from around the world were booking plane tickets to Canada, the country with the crack-smoking mayor. CNN set up a live satellite truck behind City Hall. The BBC flew in a correspondent. Toronto’s mayor was regularly being skewered on American late-night television.

On November 7, with the world documenting every crazy twist emerging from City Hall, the
Star
revealed it had obtained another video of the mayor.

The video showed the mayor raging, pacing, punching the air, and threatening to kill somebody. “I’m gonna kill that fucking guy. I’m telling you, it’s first-degree murder,” he says, talking rapidly. “I’ll rip his fucking throat out. I’ll poke his eyes out.… I’ll make sure that motherfucker’s dead.… I’m a sick motherfucker, dude.”

Ford seemed to be ranting about someone who’d called the three Ford brothers “liars” and “thieves.” The clip is seventyseven seconds long and seems to have been shot in August 2013. Someone off-camera tells Ford to wait until “after … the by-election,” referring to a provincial election in Etobicoke. In the footage, it’s obvious that the mayor is on something.

That afternoon, Ford was once again apologizing. “I just wanted to come out and tell you I saw a video. It’s extremely embarrassing. The whole world’s going to see it. You know
what? I don’t have a problem with that.… I hope none of you have ever or will ever be in that state. Obviously, I was extremely, extremely inebriated.”

But that wasn’t the last bit of breaking news.

That evening, I was in the City Hall press gallery, finishing a story about how recent events would likely shake up the mayoral candidate roster for 2014, when I heard Diane Ford talking. I whirled around in my chair and there was Ford’s mother and his addict sister, Kathy, having a sit-down TV interview with CP24 anchor Stephen LeDrew.

“Oh, my god,” I cried out, “Kathy Ford is on television!”

I couldn’t believe it. Kathy Ford had never appeared publicly. The
Star
didn’t even have a photo of her in its archives. Now, she was sitting with her mother on a big beige couch in what I recognized to be the Ford family home, volunteering for an interview. Kathy, wearing a red slouchy turtleneck with a black shawl, was the spitting image of her baby brother. She had the same pug nose, heavy brow, turned-down mouth, and blond hair.

It was a train wreck, and I couldn’t look away. I wondered what addled strategy would involve bringing out a drugaddicted sister to defend a mayor accused of drug addiction. Why would one of the most powerful politicians in the country have his mother fight his battles? Kathy and Diane Ford had to have done this on their own. Somewhere, I imagined Doug Ford’s head exploding.

“I was so angry,” Kathy began. “I guess, before this, first of all, at Rob, my brother. I love him to death. I will support him to his dying day. As my dad always said, ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ And we have lived by that as a family. And it’s hard,
sometimes, but to see the people jumping on the bandwagon. And the people that did not support him and just taking this for all it’s worth.”

Kathy spoke with the husky voice of someone who had lived a hard life. It was difficult to follow her scattered train of thought.

“Robbie is not a drug addict. I know, because I’m a former addict. Or an addict, if you would want to say. And as an alcoholic, if you want to consider binge drinking, once every three months and you get totally plastered, which he just makes a fool out of himself, and I’ve even asked him to leave my own— one time I saw him, fine—but he has done so much other things than this. And it seems— Nobody, I mean, unfortunately, yes, this has all come out. And it’s horrible, and the first person that was upset was my mom.”

We were all watching through our fingers by this point. It was so awkward, so telling, you almost felt guilty seeing it.

Now it was Diane Ford’s turn. A grandmother eight times over, Diane was still a striking woman. She wore an all-black ensemble with a chunky belt and stylish black glasses. Her short blond hair was swept back and coiffed.

“It’s not acceptable behaviour,” she said. “He is the mayor of the city. But he knows that better than anyone. Now but, you know, to err is human, but to forgive is divine. And we all err … but forgiveness isn’t in the eyes of the media right now.”

Both women said that Rob wouldn’t be resigning. There was no need. They’d had a family meeting the previous Friday and talked everything through.

“It was a real outpouring of feelings. There was nothing put on. There were no lies. There was— I think it was just how we
all felt about each other. What our expectations, what my expectations, are for my family,” Diane said. “I didn’t say shape up or ship out, but I did say, ‘You know, Rob, this is— You’ve gotta maybe smarten up a little bit. Get back on line. I know you can do it. I know you are doing it. But now you have to—’ He does have a problem … he has a problem. He’s got a weight problem.”

Diane had come up with a five-point strategy to set things right. Get a driver. Lose some weight. Put an alcohol detector in the car. Get a new group of friends. See a counsellor, maybe a psychologist.

Stephen LeDrew clarified: So do they think Rob has not had a substance issue?

“No. Absolutely not,” Kathy said. “He couldn’t function if he was. He couldn’t accomplish the things he has. Some people say you’re an alcoholic if you binge drink … other people say, if you have one every night before dinner, you’re an alcoholic. It depends what you want to consider an alcoholic. And Robbie does not drink every night, and he does not drink one. When Robbie drinks, I think he just goes full tilt.”

Then Diane addressed the question a lot of people were no doubt thinking, given that more than one of the Ford children had grown up with substance issues.

“They weren’t raised that way at all.”

This prompted Kathy to start on a subject that Diane clearly thought was a mistake.

“And [Rob] being the youngest, and watching all the rest of us grow up,” she said. “And, you know, I’m not saying that we were bad or anything, but I’m just saying—”

Her mother shot her a look and they both chuckled. Kathy stopped talking and LeDrew changed the subject.

I re-watched the interview twice that night. To me, it was the clearest window ever provided into the Ford family. The spectre of Doug Ford Sr., the loyalty and tension between the siblings, the denial, the shifting of blame, the entitlement. And to say, after the stunning revelations of the previous week, that Rob Ford’s problem was his weight, that if he’d just put a Breathalyzer in his car things would be better? It was flabbergasting—as if some combination of ambition, family allegiance, and denial had clouded their judgment.