Rob Ford Memorial Stadium? Doug Ford wants it, John Tory backs it

School athletes will soon be competing in Rob Ford Memorial Stadium if Toronto Mayor John Tory gets his way.

In a letter to his city council colleagues obtained by the Star, Tory makes the case for renaming Centennial Park Stadium to honour his predecessor who served as an Etobicoke councillor for a decade before a tumultuous term as mayor. Ford, 46, died from cancer, after a return to council, in March 2016.

The Rob Ford saga would be hard to swallow — if we didn’t live through it

Had we not lived through it, we might not now believe it.

But we did live through it, and so we know that it was neither a dream nor a fantasy.

It was something altogether real — the topsy-turvy four-year mayoralty of Robert Bruce Ford, a man known to Torontonians and most Canadians, not to mention many late-night television viewers across the continent, as just plain Rob Ford, a simple, unadorned moniker for a complicated and flamboyant man, who split this city’s residents into two mutually uncomprehending camps.

Police drove Rob Ford home, didn't charge him with impaired driving: ex-chief of staff

Toronto police officers helped Rob Ford on "multiple occasions" after stopping his vehicle while he was still mayor, rather than charge him with driving impaired, his former chief of staff says.

The allegation emerged Saturday in an excerpt from a soon to-be-released book by Mark Towhey titled  Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable.

Rob Ford's 'Reckless' Behaviour Called Out By Integrity Commissioner

Toronto's integrity commissioner says then-mayor Rob Ford was "unnecessarily reckless" when he accidentally knocked over a city councillor during a televised high-stakes meeting two years ago.

In a report to be presented at next week's council meeting, Valerie Jepson says the collision on Nov. 18 2013 caused Coun. Pam McConnell "physical and emotional harm."

The incident occurred during a special meeting that saw Ford stripped of most of his powers and budget following his admission that he had smoked crack cocaine during his term in office.

As Fords exit mayor's office, conflict probes intensify

When Toronto city councillors were debating a zoning change in 2011, Doug Ford withdrew from the discussion because it could have affected a property leased by packaged-meats giant Maple Leaf Foods — a major client of his family printing business.

But then when the matter came up weeks later for final approval at city council, Ford and his brother, Mayor Rob Ford, voted on it.

As the Fords pack up their City Hall offices after last month's Toronto municipal elections, which saw Doug lose his bid for the mayoralty and Rob reduced to councillor, scrutiny of those votes and others is only intensifying.

If Toronto wants to ditch racism and homophobia, start with Rob and Doug Ford

In the wake of a mayoral debate in which supporters of Doug Ford, the recent doppelganger replacement for the ailing personality cult front man Rob Ford, ranted their homophobic and racist views, Toronto's media has, rather tentatively, begun to question why Doug Ford does not take a stronger stand against the bigots in his midst.

Edward Keenan in the Toronto Star noted of the debate:

One woman arrived at the debate with an unflattering caricature of the Ford brothers, only to have it torn from her hands and crumpled up, she told reporters. Iola Fortino was removed by police after disrupting the debate with a rant. According to other media reports, she proclaimed that Rob Ford “goes to the family cottage during Pride, that’s why we love him. We need Ford Nation.” 

Later in the debate, another proud Ford advocate, who identified himself to the National Post’s Christie Blatchford as Earl Cowan, shouted: “Go home, Olivia! Back to China!” When challenged by the crowd, Blatchford reported, he followed up with: “She’s Chinese! She’s not Canadian!”

What’s unforgivable about the Fords

Here’s what I find unforgivable about the Fords; it took till now to figure it out. It’s not their right-wing politics. There’s lots of that around. It’s not the bullying, bullies can be dealt with. Nor their huge ambition and sense of political entitlement. It’s not Rob’s moral foibles or unsavoury social life or his crassness.

What’s unforgivable is their implacable need and ability to suck up attention in the public arena so there never seems room for anything or anyone else in the city. The stuff I just listed serves primarily to keep them at the centre of attention and stifle other matters. It’s all, always about them. That’s what the cancer episode revealed. It too becomes part of the Ford family circus. It’s not just a private experience; it takes over the public agenda.

Rob Ford asked city staff to consider expropriation to help client

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s office asked city staff to look into using one of their most coercive powers – the expropriation of privately owned land – to help a client of the mayor’s family business add more parking spaces.

Mayor Ford’s relationship with Apollo Health and Beauty Care, a soap manufacturer that contracts the Ford family’s printing company to make labels for its products, is the focus of an ongoing investigation by Toronto’s integrity commissioner. In the first two years of Mr. Ford’s mayoralty, he and his brother Councillor Doug Ford, repeatedly came to the aid of Apollo, helping the soap company unsuccessfully lobby the city’s top manager for a special property tax break and calling a meeting with three top managers after water inspectors began probing Apollo’s alleged role in a sewage spill.

In last-minute reversal, Ford backs out of two mayoral debates

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford will be a no-show at two mayoral debates planned for this week, after dropping out at the 11th hour.

Jeff Silverstein, Mr. Ford’s director of communications, confirmed on Monday evening that the mayor will not attend debates held by Greenwood Community Association on Tuesday and FilmOntario on Wednesday.

Mr. Silverstein cited scheduling reasons. “Things have come up,” he said. “He’ll be participating in a number of debates.”

Ford brothers helped business client lobby city for tax break

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his councillor brother Doug Ford helped one of the customers of their family business to lobby the city’s highest ranking bureaucrat for a special property tax break and repeatedly intervened with city staff without disclosing the company had a commercial relationship with the Ford family, a Globe and Mail investigation has found.

Excusing abominable leadership isn’t just a City Hall problem

Bigotry must be entering its own kind of cretacious period, because it’s slowly beginning to get harder for dinosaurs to roam the great plains of our most influential industries. While white men still dominate much of politics, mainstream media, technology, entertainment and other key sectors, attitudes of overt exclusion (or worse) toward women and other underrepresented groups are slowly becoming a risk for those who hold power.

As social media users begin to learn what kind of power they hold, too often the risk of bigotry in leadership is quantified in public relations terms. Progress is hollow when things like racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of less-than-human treatment are treated as more “brand” problems (personal or commercial) than, you know, societal ones. Treating bigotry like a PR crisis snuffs out the potential for honest reflection about how it subtly takes shape in our psyches, the harm it causes, and how we might perpetuate it.

Hey Rob Ford! Toronto women don't need fixing

Does Mayor Rob Ford have a problem with women? Toronto women don't need fixing, but the Mayor certainly does.

Over the last several months, the Mayor would have us believe that every slip of the tongue was the result of inebriation. Human mistakes to be forgiven with every apology, and we go back to politics as usual. Were it not for the ongoing mayoralty race, the most recent video may have simply been more fodder for the late night political pundits, with no credible change to the structures which enable sexism in our public institutions. Which begs the question, in an election year, what next for Toronto?

The Ford Brothers Are Addicted To Lying

Rob Ford is an addict.

Crack, cocaine, booze, attention -- the mayor appears to love them all. But it's the lies that concern me the most.

The drugs hurt the mayor. But the deceit hurts the city.

At this point, Ford has lied so much, about so many things, that Toronto wouldn't come to his aid if there was an entire pack of wolves at his door. Then again, we don't even know where his door is right now.

It’s official, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford didn’t save $1 billion

To hear Mayor Rob Ford tell it, Toronto’s finances were a disaster before he came to office. But by running government like a business, and saving $1 billion, he managed to pull city hall from the brink and “fix the mess I inherited.”

There’s a problem with this narrative: it’s just not true. Toronto’s top financial managers shuffled their papers on Monday, cleared their throats, and explained how the boss is wrong.

Rob Ford's Rehab Sugarcoats Reality

It took a second video of Rob Ford allegedly smoking crack to get the mayor of Toronto to finally decide it's time to go to rehab. As an addict, I sympathize with Rob Ford, but I also resent the idea of him using a stint in rehab as a possible grand gesture of an apology.

Celebrities do it all the time when they get caught doing anything the general public deems immoral, from cheating (think Tiger Woods and Tori Spelling's husband Dean McDermott, for instance) to drug use and alcohol binges. It gives rehab a bad name for those of us who've actually benefited from seeking treatment to have people who don't really want help using it as a retreat to hide from the spotlight while they put on a show of remorse.

The Passion of Rob Ford, or the Neoliberal Making of Toronto’s Municipal Crisis

By now much of the world has heard of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford. Media outlets have treated us to a staccato drumbeat of astounding revelations about the mayor of Canada’s biggest city. Outside Toronto, observers gleefully tut-tut the city that Canadians love to hate for its municipal leader’s failings. Beyond Canada, people follow the city’s ongoing political soap opera with a mix of amazement and amusement. It’s little surprise that so easy a target has become the object of global mockery, especially in the United States. Many south of the border imagine Canada to be a kinder, gentler, better-ordered place—a peaceful, well-governed society whose good manners and health care system offer a mirror with which to examine their own society’s failures. Americans have watched videos of big city mayors smoking crack before; Ford comes as a comic surprise because they simply never imagined that things like this could happen in Canada, too.

Rob Ford may have broken election rules, rival says

Rob Ford's rival in the 2014 campaign has filed a freedom of information request to determine whether the mayor is breaking election rules.

Candidate David Soknacki is asking for the release of schedules, memos, and other communications by Ford and five of his staffers in order to determine whether the mayor’s office is being used as an unofficial campaign headquarters.

"We're not doing it just as a fishing expedition," said Soknacki’s campaign manager Brian Kelcey, who filed the request at City Hall on Tuesday. "We believe that there's reasonable cause to suspect or at least inquire as to whether there are campaign activities taking place, or campaign conversations taking place in the mayor's office."

Flirting with disaster

Rob Ford was spotted clubbing on the weekend, making an appearance at Muzik, the popular disco to the stars at the Exhibition grounds January 11.

It didn’t take long, of course, for photos of the mayor embracing female fans to start making the rounds on social media. Only this time he didn’t appear to be intoxicated. 

Rob Ford bobble heads make a comeback as elves deliver coal

In case you had any doubts, things are still completely ridiculous at Toronto City Hall.

On Friday, a new wave of Rob Ford bobble heads went on sale with the mayor himself on hand to autograph the dolls for those who waited in line for hours to get one.

“Bobble-head Bedlam II,” as the Canadian Press has dubbed it, saw more than a thousand people who had enough time on a Friday to purchase a $20 bobble head of a crack-smoking mayor.

Black ops

Now that Conrad Black has entered the fray, the Rob Ford scandal has gone all cock-eyed.

The guy fighting the elites, that would be Rob, has an elitist going to bat for him in the pages of the National Post which, with Black’s offering Saturday seems to have taken up the mantle vacated by the Sun as defender of all things Ford. Wow. If you thought Conrad’s VisionTV one-on-one with Ford was a mess…

Conny really dumped on the Star and its “values,” used a lot of big words to show how highbrow he is. I think I read a verbal assault in there somewhere of Rosie DiManno who, according to Black, can’t get over his wife Babs’ “timeless appearance.” There was a reference in there to a “malignant orifice.” But I guess one good fart-catching joke deserves another.