Mayor Rob Ford
2010–2014
The 64th mayor of Toronto
Occupations: Printing executive, volunteer football coach, City of Toronto councillor, philanthropist
Residence While Mayor: 223 Edenbridge Drive
Birth: May 28, 1969, in Toronto
Death: March 16, 2016, in Toronto
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Robert “Rob” Bruce Ford was born at Etobicoke’s Humber Memorial Hospital on May 28, 1969, the son of Doug Ford, Sr., and Diane Campbell, at a time when much of the borough was still undeveloped. Doug Ford, Sr., had founded Deco Labels in 1962, a company specializing in pressure-sensitive labels.
In the early 1970s, the Ford family moved to a sprawling six-bedroom California ranch-style home at 15 Weston Wood Road off Royal York Road. Its spacious backyard surrounded a saltwater pool and became a political gathering place for Toronto Conservatives. In his book Ford Nation: Two Brothers, One Vision, Doug Ford, Jr., later Ontario’s premier, noted that the family home had hosted 200,000 attendees at political events over four decades.
Young Rob Ford attended Westmount Junior School, and in 1983, discovered a love of football while attending Scarlett Heights Collegiate in Etobicoke. Keen to have his son one day become a professional football player, Rob’s father arranged for him to attend a training camp at the University of Notre Dame.
Ford attended Carleton University in Ottawa to study political science and business administration, and though his true goal was to play for the Carleton Ravens football team, he remained on the bench the whole year. Not liking Ottawa, he transferred to York University, continuing courses in economics and political science. He began coaching high school football, viewing it in the same way as politics: competitive, intense, demanding, and with the goal to win. He soon joined Deco Labels, working on both the factory floor and in the sales department.
In the June 1995 Ontario provincial election, the Ford family enthusiastically pitched in to get Doug Ford, Sr., elected the MPP for Etobicoke-Humber in Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government. Rob Ford himself first ran for office in the 1997 Toronto election in Ward 3 (Kingsway-Humber), which elected two councillors. Placing fourth, he returned to Deco Labels and coaching football. He also served as a volunteer with the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Terry Fox Foundation, the Salvation Army Red Shield Appeal, and the Rotary Club of Etobicoke.
In 2000, Ford married Renata Brejniak at Etobicoke’s All Saints Roman Catholic Church and soon after ran again for the Council that November. Even the Toronto Star endorsed Ford, who was elected with some 5,700 votes in Ward 2 (Etobicoke North). Ford toiled for 10 years on the Council’s backbench, very much outside the established power structure at City Hall. Concentrating on constituency service, he founded the Rob Ford Football Foundation to fund football programs at eight west end high schools. In 2003, he was handily re-elected with 79 percent of the vote.
On the Council, Ford sought to end a range of initiatives, including new homeless shelters, “green” initiatives, public art and commercial facade improvements, new community centres, the Don Valley Brick Works, and 13 library-expansion projects. His arch-conservative views were well received in his ward, and in 2006, he was again re-elected, this time with 66 percent of the vote.
Ford turned constituency service into a religion and also tackled politically incorrect causes. When a suicide barrier was proposed for the Bloor Street Viaduct, he stated the money would be better spent cracking down on pedophiles, since they caused people to commit suicide. He blamed the Walkerton water crisis on “people drinking on the job [who] weren’t even competent at what they were doing”1 and declared that if people were killed on their bikes, “it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”2
His right-wing, plain-talking, tight-fisted populism became the Ford Nation political brand, appealing to a broad coalition of conservative suburban voters and working-class, lunch-bucket, blue-collar workers. In March 2010 on AM 640 Radio, Ford announced his run for mayor with a clever four-word political pledge to “stop the gravy train.” The populist Ford said that it gave “luxuries and perks to politicians and rich contracts to their friends.”3 The four-word slogan proved to be one of the most effective in Canadian political history.
Ford’s platform included more contracting out, getting tough on unions, new subways, more police officers, privatized garbage collection, the removal of streetcars from city streets, an end to racing marathons clogging traffic, and an end to the “war on the car.”4 His principal mayoral opponent, former MPP and Liberal minister George Smitherman, was Ford’s polar opposite.
Although initially dismissed as a long shot by Toronto’s political elite, Ford prevailed in a field of 40 mayoral candidates, capturing 383,501 votes (47 percent) to Smitherman’s 289,832 (36 percent) and 95,482 (12 percent) for third-place candidate Joe Pantalone. Ford swept suburban wards in Etobicoke, York, North York, and Scarborough. Yet, from the outset, his term was marked by confrontation when Canadian hockey icon Don Cherry, the invited guest speaker at his swearing-in, publicly attacked bicycle-riding “pinkos,” “left-wing kooks,” and “left-wing pinko newspapers.”5
In office, Ford moved quickly, axing the city’s $60 per vehicle registration tax, removing senior city housing officials, slashing councillors’ office budgets, and narrowly approving a Scarborough subway extension. Yet his political support faltered due to a number of political missteps: an unpopular proposal to redevelop the Port Lands, closing public libraries, pushing for a downtown casino, and chaotic plans to slash the city budget.
Personally, cracks also began to appear: police were called to the mayor’s home for domestic incidents, he was asked to leave a military ball after showing up incoherent and seemingly high, and on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012, he was involved in a drunken fight during which he attempted to beat up one of his staff.
However, it was the 14 months from May 2013 to September 2014 that defined Ford’s legacy, starting with the U.S. website Gawker showing him smoking what seemed to be crack cocaine. Ford’s mayoralty and Toronto’s civic affairs were thrown into a period of upheaval unlike anything experienced before.
Ford already had a fractious relationship with the city’s media, but for months was an ever-present and daily fixture in the 24-hour news cycle. Former TV journalist Sean Mallen described it as a train wreck, noting that Ford “scrums were legendary, chaotic, unpredictable, and occasionally dangerous.”6
In October 2013, Bill Blair, Toronto’s police chief, publicly announced that the “crack video” had been recovered, and then a second video emerged of Ford in a drunken rampage. For the first time, a sitting Toronto mayor was forced to publicly answer questions about drug use. After months of denials, he finally admitted in November 2013 that he had indeed smoked crack cocaine in a “drunken stupor.”7
It was simply too much for Toronto’s Council. Unable to force him from office, it slashed the mayoral office budget, transferred most of his staff to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly, and stripped him of all non-statutory powers. He was now mayor in name only, the only one to admit illegal drug use and consorting with known criminals and gang members.
Nevertheless, on January 2, 2014, he declared himself to be “the best mayor that this city’s ever had” and filed for re-election, pushing his new “Ford More Years” slogan. In an editorial the next day, though, the Toronto Star proclaimed “Ford is first, and the worst”8 in the 2014 campaign for mayor. In April 2014, Ford sought professional help for substance abuse at the Greenstone Clinic, returning to work in June and polling in second place for mayor.
On September 12, 2014, Toronto’s incumbent mayor suddenly withdrew his candidacy after the discovery of a malignant liposarcoma, a rare form of soft-tissue cancer. He registered instead to run again as councillor in his former Ward 2 seat, while brother Doug Ford, Jr., replaced him on the mayoral ballot. The family’s total combined donation of $779,000 toward the various Ford 2014 city races is the highest family contribution to any mayoral campaign in Canadian history.9
On October 27, 2014, John Tory was elected the city’s 65th mayor, while Rob Ford continued with multiple rounds of chemotherapy, treatments that continued until March 2016, when he returned to hospital. On March 22, 2016, Ford died, age 46, surrounded by a loving family.
A full civic funeral was held, with visitations in the rotunda of city hall and a formal service at the Anglican Cathedral Church of St. James. Perhaps the most poignant memory of Ford came from his young daughter, Stephanie Ford, who said: “What matters was that we’re happy together…. I know my dad is in a better place.” She noted that he was “the mayor of heaven now.”10 As the National Post observed, “Ford did accomplish a rare feat in Canadian politics. He built a movement based around his own identity.”11
Mayoral Election for 2010–2014
CANDIDATES VOTES
Rob Ford 383,501
George Smitherman 289,832
Joe Pantalone 95,482
Rocco Rossi 5,012
SPECIAL NOTE: There were 36 minor mayoral candidates. Rocco Rossi dropped out of the election, but it was too late to have his name removed from the ballot.
The Mayor at Home: A Look at the Private World of Rob Ford
From Mark Maloney, “Who Lives Here? At Home with Toronto’s Would-Be Mayors,” Toronto Star, July 31, 2010, and an interview in June 2010 by Mark Maloney with Rob Ford. All Rob Ford quotations
taken from these two sources:
Believe it or not, Toronto’s 64th mayor loves doing laundry. Yes, laundry! Rob Ford says it’s his favourite way to relax. “I know it sounds funny, but I do the laundry at our place. When I come home, I pick up all the clothes, go downstairs, divide the whites and the darks, hop on the phone, return my calls — and I get tons of calls — and I’ll be folding clothes and doing laundry. I love it.” But Ford does have one rule of thumb: “I never return calls after 11:00 p.m.”
Ford’s home is a modest yet tidy 1950s-style grey brick bungalow at 223 Edenbridge Drive in central Etobicoke, one of Toronto’s more affluent neighbourhoods. Nestled between the St. George’s and Lambton golf and country clubs, it’s one of the smallest homes in a treed enclave of plush multi-million-dollar mansions with winding circular driveways, four-car garages, and imposing wrought-iron gates.
It’s also no coincidence that Ford is also the 2010 mayoral candidate living the farthest away — almost 12 kilometres — from Toronto’s trendy and left-of-centre downtown core. It also helps to explain his fervent campaign as an anti–David Miller, anti-tax, anti–City Hall, pro-business suburban outsider; and a gravy-hating, self-appointed champion of the little guy.
However, no taxpayer, journalist, or even “Ford Nation” supporter, will ever see the inside of his residence, described even by Ford himself as “very messy.” Unless you are a member of the family, an intimate friend, or a top mayoral aide, it is off limits.
The closest one will ever see is the Ford family’s sprawling ancestral compound nearby, site of the Ford Fest political gatherings. It’s where young Rob grew up and honed his political ambitions. The sprawling six-bedroom, ranch-style home with its high-end finishes, sloped stone terraces, designer landscaping, screened patios, and shimmering saltwater pool is on Weston Wood Road.
Ford himself has lived in just three other homes. Attending Carleton University in the 1990s, he lived in a well-known Lees Avenue high-rise filled with immigrants, students, and blue-collar workers. Returning to Toronto, he resided for 10 years at 600 Rexdale Boulevard across from Woodbine Racetrack before marrying Renata Brejniak, a receptionist at his family’s printing firm. And then, in 2002, he purchased his current bungalow “from an 80-year-old hermit” for $499,000. [Note: in 2018, following Rob Ford's death, his wife listed the property for sale for $2.5 million.]
Although buying it for what he calls “a steal,” convincing his wife to move in was another matter. “There were cobwebs in the whole house … the downstairs wasn’t used, the kitchen wasn’t used … the couch in one area was black.”
Ford openly notes that he could never live in older parts of Toronto: “I need space. I like my own driveway. I like my own backyard.” And he is fiercely protective of his family’s privacy. In Ford’s case, all political work and entertaining is done elsewhere.
“I wouldn’t bring anybody here, right now … it’s all toys for the kids here. It’s old … it has to basically be redone,” he says. Ford plans to tear down this home and build new on the same site but will wait several years until his children are older.
While his passions include politics, the family printing business, and coaching football, it is the time spent with his young children, Dougie Junior and Stephanie, that truly relaxes him. The kids love going with him to City Hall on weekends, where they can run in the wide hallways. Although not a big traveller, Ford enjoys quiet time at his cottage on Fawn Lake near Huntsville because no one can find him there. Emphatic when saying he is no cook, Ford prefers to dine out, yet claims to make a mean rice pudding, and on weekends will whip up bacon and eggs for the family. “While I’m not a chef, I do like eating,” he says, and Chinese food, veal parmesan, and a good steak top his list.
What restaurants would he recommend? His favourites are Mississauga’s “phenomenal La Castile restaurant,” Rosa’s Place in Woodbridge, the Asian Buffet on Rexdale Boulevard, and the “amazing” Mayflower Chinese restaurant on Royal York Road. For steak, it’s Harbour Sixty or Ruth’s Chris, though both are, he mentions, “way too pricey.” And he asks every Italian restaurant to please take note: he is searching for the city’s best veal parmesan.
At home Ford likes to relax with a game of Ping-Pong, though he admits “it’s hard to find someone to play it with,” and though holding season’s tickets to the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Argonauts, he is not a big fan of basketball or soccer.
As for his entertainment tastes? Old repeats of Seinfeld, Three’s Company, and Cheers are favourites. He’s not a real fan of cop shows such as Law & Order or CSI, though he loves America’s Most Wanted. Ford loves to unwind with a good documentary, a fishing show, or a comedy. A big fan of Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy, Gene Wilder, and Richard Pryor, Ford counts the 1980 classic Stir Crazy as his all-time favourite flick.
When not returning calls on his cellphone, Ford will crank up a CD of Supertramp classics while driving around the city. Rounding out his musical tastes are the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and early disco. While his radio loyalties include 680 News, the John Oakley Show, and Leaf Talk on AM 640, it’s no surprise that CBC-FM is not a favourite.
For exercise, Ford used to run “religiously,” he claims. Eight kilometres every night at a nearby track. And while now 136 kilograms, up from a once “108 kilos of solid muscle,” he notes it is impossible to jog out in the street. “People are honking, people are pulling over, people are stopping me,” all wanting to talk, he says.
While now running for mayor, Ford reveals that it has been 15 years since he has read any non-fiction books, and his current reading centres around just three things: his Council-related agenda materials, the financial statements of his family’s printing firm, and information about his own personal investments.
Although always wanting to be in the know, Ford proudly observes that he’s “not online all that much.” And “forget e-mail,” says Ford. He prefers the grassroots, face-to-face, very personal touch.