The wild life of Canada's favourite crack-smoking, escort-loving mayor

Telegraph

5 hours ago

It is a feature of modern life that many of the world's best-loved politicians, from Donald Trump to Boris Johnson, are colourful, charismatic and deeply flawed characters to whom normal rules of behaviour simply do not seem to apply. The worse their actions are, the more they are beloved by a public who refuse to accept that their idols are not on their side. Yet few have been as swashbucklingly, hilariously outrageous in their buccaneering showmanship as Rob Ford, the one-time mayor of Toronto.
Ford came to international attention when he gave a press conference in 2013 in which he not only denied claims that he had smoked crack cocaine – something that the newspaper the Toronto Star had seen video footage of – but then proceeded to attack the media for daring to report verifiable fact as fact.
Over the course of Shianne Brown's frequently jaw-dropping new Netflix documentary, Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, Ford's brief, chaotic and flamboyant life comes into focus once again. There are clear and obvious parallels with both Johnson and Trump, although Ford's hard-living, heavy-drinking ways have little in common with the teetotal president and the largely abstemious former PM. Instead, what is so remarkable about the politician is that he had an innate gift for connecting with his public, despite his outrageous and wildly controversial personal life.
The crack-smoking – which under normal circumstances would have finished his career forever – was only the most egregious of the many things that he did. But as one former colleague of his remarks, perhaps hopefully, 'in the long run, history will think of him as a man who had an illness and accomplished things that have never been accomplished before.'
Ford's father, Douglas, was a successful self-made businessman and member of the Progressive Conservative party who passed on both his political views and energetic drive to succeed to his four children, especially his sons Doug and Rob. They became known as the 'Ford family enterprise' as a result. Mayor of Mayhem does not explore Ford's initial rise to prominence, which came when he was a city councillor for Ward 2 Etobicoke North in Toronto, but it is a fascinating story.
In language which anticipated the rise of Trump and Elon Musk and their cost-cutting exercises, Ford declared in 2001, when the city was facing a budgetary shortfall and necessary rise in taxes, 'I have to give my head a shake because some of the rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of some of these councillors boggles my mind, I swear. ... Get the government out of our backyards. It's ridiculous. Government red tape here. Bureaucratic here. It's nonsense having all this government.'
He led by example, refusing to claim expenses and saying that 'all this office budget stuff is self-promotion to benefit yourself. Why should the taxpayers have to pay for it? It boggles my mind.' Ford also had a knack for the quotable insult or jest. He argued against installing suicide prevention barriers on the Prince Edward Viaduct, claiming that the money should instead be spent on prosecuting paedophiles 'who are the main cause of people jumping off bridges.'
He referred to political opponents as 'scammers' and 'goons', and when accused of racism, blithely denied it, saying 'I'm a conservative and the majority of people are left-wing and cannot stand my politics.'
Ford made many enemies in his early political career, but he, a self-described 'public servant', also was seen as energetic and accessible by voters. Prone to exaggeration – the documentary observes that even from his early campaign appearances, he would claim that a crowd of 2,000 voters was in fact 5,000 – and also to self-mythologising, he had a knack of communicating with the public that resonated with people tired of the same old politicians.
As one acquaintance put it: 'Rob Ford gives out his business card out to virtually everyone he meets and says 'if you have any problems, call me'.' This cut through usual expectations of public service, often to unexpected effect. At Ford's funeral, his brother Doug recounted the anecdote of how Ford, picking up a takeaway sandwich, was surprised to learn that there was no delivery driver available to fulfil an order. Ford volunteered to take the sandwich himself, on the grounds that it might endear him to a potential voter. 'They gave me $35 for a $32 order, so I got a $3 tip!' he later recounted.
Ford, a large, imposing figure who bore a resemblance to the late actor John Candy, decided to run for mayor in the 2010 election amidst public dissatisfaction with his left-wing predecessor David Miller, who had served two terms in office but had lost his standing amidst a lengthy strike by garbage workers in the summer of 2019. Ford's platform was unashamedly populist, with such slogans as 'Stop the Gravy Train' and 'Respect for taxpayers'.
His opponents attempted to draw attention to previous misdemeanours of his, including an arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol in Miami in 1999, but Ford shrugged them off. His popularity only grew with voters, who saw him as an accessible everyman figure, and he was elected mayor with 47 per cent of the vote. As his special assistant Tom Beyer puts it in Mayor of Mayhem: 'We were outsiders and now we were insiders.'
The first indications that it would be an eventful mayoralty came on St Patrick's Day in 2012, a little over a year since he was elected. Ford held a 'wild party' in which he was said to be under the influence of both alcohol and drugs, and when the Toronto Star reported that the mayor was a heavy drinker, angrily denounced the story as 'lies, after lies, and lies'. He was said to have hired a blonde sex worker named Alana for this party and to have drunk and taken copious quantities of drugs with her, before announcing that he intended to '[go] out then [get] laid.'
The newspaper now redoubled its attempts to find some dirt in Ford's eventful private life, and was rewarded with its vigilance by being informed, in May 2013, that a video existed of the mayor smoking crack cocaine. They were offered its sale for $100k, but as the Toronto Star had a policy of not paying for stories, was unable to back up a hugely significant scoop. It looked as if it could not be printed, until the gossip website Gawker, which got hold of the same information, published their own story first, to be picked up on by the grateful Toronto Star.
Even as one of Ford's aides acknowledged 'that's a problem', the mayor simply described the story as more falsehoods, and suggested that the video had been doctored. This may have been a blatant untruth, but it was said with enough conviction to persuade half the citizens of Toronto that the newspaper was biased against Ford and casting around for evidence to discredit him.
The mayor blithely admitted things that would have led to any other politician being disgraced – in August 2013, when asked about cannabis use, he announced that 'I won't deny that, I smoked a lot of it' – but he seemed in denial about the damning video. When his chief of staff Mark Towhey suggested, given the inevitability of its becoming public, that Ford should seize the initiative and enter rehab, the mayor simply fired him. And so, when Toronto police chief Bill Blair announced on October 31 that he had seen the video, which had been captured after a gun smuggling raid, Ford refused to admit its existence.
In an instantly notorious press conference, he came out fighting: 'I have no reason to resign, I'm going to go back and return my phone calls, gonna be out doing what the people elected me to do and that's save taxpayers money and run a great government.' He then addressed rumours that he had behaved inappropriately towards a young female staffer, Olivia Gondek, who had resigned the previous year. He claimed that '[The newspaper] says that I wanted to 'eat her p----'. I've never said that in my life to her. I would never do that. I'm happily married. I've got more than enough to eat at home.'
Matters fell apart swiftly. Five days later, Ford was compelled to admit that 'Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine but ... am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Um, probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.' Eventually, the penitent mayor announced 'I will be forever sorry', but a series of embarrassing videos were leaked of Ford claiming he was a 'sick motherf-----' and miming bizarre fight moves.
In another, the mayor was filmed shouting 'I need f---ing' ten minutes to make sure he's dead!' When asked in an interview 'have you purchased illegal drugs in the last two years', Ford was compelled to say 'Yes, I have.' By the time a video appeared of him speaking in Jamaican patois, it was all one long-suffering aide could do to say 'it all blurs.'
The Toronto mayor was now an international joke, lambasted on chat shows all over America. Jay Leno, observing the latest absurd development, quipped: 'There's not a lot to do in Toronto.' When Ford entered the council chamber, amidst public demonstrations demanding that he resign as mayor, his fellow politicians yelled 'shame' at him, leading Ford to retort that they were 'scumbags' before charging and inadvertently knocking one woman over with his significant bulk.
Unabashed, he then announced' 'This reminds me of when Saddam attacked Kuwait…you guys have just attacked Kuwait.'
Despite everything, Ford was not only able to remain as mayor, but he announced his intention of standing for re-election ('Why retreat when you can keep pushing ahead?'). Even as yet another video surfaced of him smoking crack, he tried to get his life into some sort of order, albeit on his own, inimitable terms. He entered rehab, lost weight, was seen in the company of Hulk Hogan (who he beat in an arm wrestling contest) and Mike Tyson and once again set about seducing the citizens of Toronto as only he could. Had he not been diagnosed with a rare cancer, pleomorphic liposarcoma, he may even have won re-election.
In the event, his brother Doug stood in his stead and came a close runner-up to the eventual winner, John Tory. Ford instead fought and won his city council seat once more, indicating his extraordinary public popularity, and held it until his death on 22 March 2016. He was only 46. In one of the last scenes in Mayor of Mayhem, a bald, pensive-looking Ford is interviewed while going through chemotherapy. 'I'm doing the best I can in the situation,' he says softly. He believed that he would beat his illness, as he had beaten everything else that had come at him in his brief and eventful life. He was wrong.
Doug Ford, now Premier of Ontario, has already denounced Mayor of Mayhem and its makers: 'It's just disgusting. Leave the guy alone. Let him rest in peace. Let his family rest in peace. They're just disgusting people. It just absolutely infuriates me, to be honest with you. [If] they want the truth, talk to the real people who absolutely loved him.'
Certainly, it offers an unvarnished and at times highly unflattering picture of his younger brother as a Falstaffian, self-centred ruffian whose lack of impulse control meant that what might have been a legendary political career ended up falling apart, mired in scandal and sleaze. But what scandal, and what sleaze! If Rob Ford is to be remembered for anything, more than a decade after his death, it is in taking political wrongdoing to new depths, and making himself immortal in the process. There will never be another politician like him. We hope.