Rob Ford

Many people outside of Toronto were surprised that what is generally considered a progressive city would elect a man like Rob Ford as mayor. I never voted for Rob Ford or his brother Doug, but I certainly understood why he was elected. He was Donald Trump the politician before Trump ran for politics.

Ford, like Trump but on a smaller scale, was  rich man that appealed to the average person on the street that struggled to get ahead. They are anti-establishment but in a strange way members of the elite that people rail against.

Jack Layton and Rob Ford were polar opposites. Rob Ford was loved by the people that Layton claimed to fight for. Layton was a longtime Toronto city councillor before he ran for federal politics. Layton had his followers and won enough elections but he was never loved in the city. He claimed to fight for the poor and disaffected but his followers were the downtown arts crowd. Not the poor in distant suburbs of the city, Ford appealed to those people. His followers were the anti-arts crowds.

Ford coached an inner-city football team, bought them their equipment out of his own money. He took their phone calls. He got his hands dirty helping the little guy. No one thought that Jack Layton was going to take your call, or volunteer at a local rec centre. And if he did it would have been for political gain. I still remember watching the Hockey Gold medal game at the Olympics on TV. Jack Layton was at Wayne Gretzky's bar and the CBC had a camera at the bar, After every Canada goal the CBC would show the crowd reaction at Gretzky's. There was Jack staring directly into the camera and on one occasion moving a woman out of his camera shot. It was concocted and pathetic. Ford was the anti-Layton. For all of his enormous faults Ford was genuine. He went to sports games because he loved sports, not for political gain.

I thought that Ford was a bad mayor and set back transit at least 10-years. When it came to his personal problems you could not trust a word he said, or that of his brother Doug. But I was never embarrassed he was our mayor. I was endlessly amused by his antics. Ford was a likable guy.

I can tell you precisely when Ford won the mayor's office. It was the day that the previous mayor, left leaning David Miller, caved into outside city workers that were on strike. We had a long city-wide strike in the heat of the summer. There was no garbage collection and the parks were used to collect trash. The vast majority of the people in the city supported the city's position in holding out against the strikers. The city started to win, over 200 new strikers crossed the picket line every day, the city was about to break the union and then Miller caved. From that moment Miller was done and citizens rebelled. They wanted the anti-Miller and it was Rob Ford.

I can tell you that most people in Toronto are going to miss Rob Ford's antics. It would have been an epic election had a healthy Rob Ford taken on Mayor John Tory next election.