Rob Ford, Part 1

Good mayor to you all and to all a good mayor.

Welcome to No Gods, No Mayors, Episode 3.

This is part one of our investigation of Robert Bruce Ford.

I am Riley.

I'm your mayor.

This episode, I'd love to introduce my deputy mayors, Maddie and November.

Maddie and November, good mayor to you.

Good mayor to you.

And to you.

And to all a good mayor.

And to you and yours.

And also with you.

Let the mayor shine upon you.

And truly, I think there is perhaps no more mayor in history.

Well, maybe, no.

I think Rob Ford may be the mayorist mayor that North America has ever seen, but we got boss Tweed to go, you know?

North Mayorica?

Interesting.

We're sort of like uncovering the sort of like secret substrates.

Revealing back the, I'm revealing the superstructure.

Yeah.

Coming out of the gate with the real heavy hitters.

Friggin Giuliani, Rob Ford.

Next, it's my turn and I have a pleasant surprise for you there.

So it's McCheese.

This is the mayor of Toy Town.

Listen, in six months' time, when we're all on here dying trying to think of jokes about like the deputy mayor of Pristina, then like you will, you will miss the days of Rob Ford.

Yeah, we will miss the heavily media covered Rob Ford, as opposed to being like, all right,

the deputy mayor of Brisbane did one weird thing, but his Wikipedia page is a stump.

And the Gold Coast Times has only got two articles about him.

We got to stretch it.

We got to stretch it out.

Any hooning news this week?

Okay, the Hoon Mayor.

Let's keep that in our back pocket.

It's my favorite Decembrist album.

Go on.

I think Rob Ford's spiritually, kind of a hoon.

If not factually, then spiritually.

He has the soul of a hoon.

Can I introduce to you both a quote that Rob Ford gave the Toronto Star in 2010 before any of the stuff came out?

The stuff.

Our crazy family has been through everything from murder and drugs to being successful in business.

This is like, you think Eric Adams has like a shrine to this guy?

Because that is a real Eric Adams-ass quote.

It almost perfectly mirrors New York.

You could see anything from a person celebrating the opening of a new business to 9-11.

That's one of my favorite things Eric Adams has ever said.

So nobody can tell me a story that can shock.

The idea that the two poles of the human experience here, everything,

all human endeavor is contained between murder and drugs and being successful in business.

That's right.

Those things are frequently co-located.

Well, we're going to learn all about the Ford's early life and some of his early attempts at mayoring Toronto.

Now, this is going to be two episodes that are mostly about Rob Ford the person and a little bit less about Rob Ford the mayor because he governed essentially as a right-wing deficit hawk the entire time he was in office.

He just wanted to privatize things, slash budgets, and so on.

However, the thing that makes him very distinctive, in addition to like that a lot of the things he, the budgets he slashed and services he privatized were done so like more recklessly than by like, you know, John Torrey might have done.

His successor was called John Torrey, who was a little conservative.

It's a couple of things.

It's the uncanny resemblance to a live-action Peter Griffin.

Yeah.

And

also the crack.

It's the crack.

It's because of the crack that he smoked, because he smoked crack.

Well, you think that's the funniest thing about Rob Ford.

I do.

Let's see if we still think that at the end of the hour.

Interesting.

Interesting, because this is, of course, part one of two.

So, that's our crazy family.

So, Doug Ford Sr.

is a sort of long-standing Toronto political figure

who's sort of active in local Conservative Party politics in the western Toronto suburb of Etobicoke.

Etobico is a place where a lot of

sort of well-to-do Italian families set up their lives.

It's like little Italy, but one of the nice places of Italy.

It's like little Lake Como.

Yeah, essentially.

Little Turin.

I guess the best way to describe it is many parts of it are a bit like an idyllic suburb, but it's very big and has a lot of variation.

The Ford family was very rich in a classic, like local gentry, small business tyrant way.

Doug Ford Sr.

ran a printing firm called Deco Labels and Tags.

The Ford family still owns the company.

It turns over like $100 million Canadian annual sales.

How?

Well, it makes pressure-sensitive labels for plastic-wrapped grocery products.

Like, it is the most small business, like physical capital

reactionary company you could ever imagine.

The second right-wing sticker company I'm aware of.

Insane thing to consider.

They love a vinyl.

They love a film, you know?

Yeah, wait, hold on.

Just real, just real quick.

They grew up in the little Italy of Canada.

Are they Italian?

No, Doug Ford Sr.'s parents were English immigrants.

Okay, that's good because I was worried about the direction the podcast was going if every week was just a different Italian.

Well, hang on to there may be some allegations of anti-Italianism because everybody around them is Italian.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, just like all of his like friends from like back in the day.

All of his goons.

Also, whenever we get to like Northeastern American mayors in general, that's going to be a heavy period of anti-Italian discrimination on the podcast.

Let me be clear.

I'm holding on to my Italian straw boater.

So the thing to so Etobicoke, a lot of Italian families, but that's because it's like a nice suburb.

It's not fully little Italy.

It's just where a lot of like well-to-do Italians settled.

Rob also had two brothers, Randy and Doug.

I never heard about Randy Ford much, huh?

Randy Ford is not really in the spotlight that much.

He wasn't included in a lot of his brothers' activities during their entire lives.

Doug Ford Jr.

was like Rob Ford's like political partner.

He's currently the Premier of Ontario.

He also has a sister, Kathy.

If I were a Canadian journalist, I would not be a Canadian journalist for very long because every question i would ask the premier of ontario would be like hey what did you think about your brother smoking crack was it when your brother was smoking crack while he was mayor of tor like what were your feelings about that yeah you'd be like get her out of the press pool

so kathy all of them are insanely wild uh doug ford jr like there's a lot of There's a lot of writing in press, so I'm happy to say this, about him like basically being a mid-level hash dealer throughout most of the 80s and 90s

and

involving Rob to a greater or lesser extent in their operation.

Kathy is a fucking wild one.

And by the way, Doug Jr.

is Premier of Ontario, but this is not no gods, no premiers.

It's no gods, no mayors.

A premier is maybe

a kind of mayor, but we'll have to get deep down into the kind of like, you know, sort of Burmese like village head officials before we get into like, you know, technically non-mayors.

Well, to start the spin-off podcast, no gods, no governors.

Yeah.

So, so basically, in January 2012, Kathy Ford,

her longtime boyfriend, who's also a convicted cocaine and hash dealer, like that's going to come up a lot in this story, was charged for threatening to murder Rob Ford at his Etobicoke home.

In 2005, also, he and another man were accused of shooting her in the face in an altercation in Rob Ford's parents' basement.

Good.

I think that escalates pretty far beyond an altercation if someone's getting shot in the face, you know?

Seven years earlier,

Ms.

Ford's lover fatally shot, was fatally shot by her ex-husband, a man named Ennio Sterpe.

And at his trial, Sterpe testified that this victim, Michael Kicklis, was a martial artist.

Well, just like, I was afraid he might do like a sick flip at me, so I had to shoot him.

That is what he says.

He said, at the trial, Mr.

Sterpe

testified that his victim, Michael Kicklis, and also if your name's Kickless, like what a martial artist you are.

Me when I can't remember the name of the dude who's in the shield.

Yeah, Michael Chiklis from The Shield was forced to bring a shotgun with him as a, quote, equalizer because he was a martial artist.

How good of a martial artist was this guy?

And or are you willing to say in court that he is in order to make a self-defense thing stick?

Is to be like, his hands are like deadly fucking weapons.

Like Anthony kickflip or whatever is with, it's like, he could kill me from across a room.

He's like Stephen Seagal.

But not Stephen Seagal now, like early Stephen Seagal.

Her friends also included the founding member of of the short-lived Canadian Ku Klux Klan, as well as Wolfgang Drogue, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist in Canadian history.

And Adventure of the Drogue parachute.

What is, yeah, I, the Canadian KKK, I feel like...

The CCC.

That's right.

Yeah, they're spelling it correctly up there.

It feels like

a very bad mad TV bit or something.

You know, it feels like you're like, that's a rich vein of comedy.

And then you think about it and you're like, nah, it's

four minutes out of that, maybe?

The KKK is so lucky that it would be the same acronym in French.

Otherwise, they'd have to do the same thing the RCMP does and have like two acronyms and everything, you know?

So

the reason I'm talking about Kathy Ford's early life is just so you could is to get to this

to this paragraph.

One former Klansman who agreed to answer questions by email on a condition of anonymity confirmed that Kathy Ford was close to the movement, but he couldn't recall meeting any of the Ford brothers.

But he described hanging out in the Ford's basement and being snubbed by Doug Ford Sr.

when Ms.

Kathy Ford invited him to a party on the family's boat.

So much shit going on in that basement.

I mean, it's a very basement mayorship.

Any given day in the kind of rumpus room on the like hot couch in that basement, right?

You could see any number of things.

Like Eric Adams was right, but instead of New York, it's like the Ford's basement.

Like you could see a woman being shot in the face.

You could see apparently Canada's greatest martial artists being ethered with a shotgun you could see a bunch of guys in white hoods sitting around like

her father the former klansman said did not approve of his belief but of his beliefs and she herself was engaging in fun but hardly a committed soldier in the race war oh don't worry i'm just i'm just engaging in fun i'm doing this as a bit i say as i slide the kkk hood over my face she was kind of the like she was canadian dasher for a bit is what you're saying so basically the fords house was always an epicenter of just everything happening like whether it was doug ford's hash dealing business whether it was like kkk guys hanging out and like being snubbed by the dad seeing their neighbors you just hear a shotgun go off in the middle of the night you're just like that's that's the fords again i guess you hear yeah like someone do like a jeet kundo scream followed by a shotgun

I love the idea of the house being this sort of like setting for like a magical realist novel about like the locus of energy around this thing it's like the generations of people going through the basement and experiencing the most fucked up shit imaginable the fords moved into the oldest house well they had a giant mansion in this like sort of central suburb now rob ford himself always wanted a career in football he never wanted to be anything but a football player He went to Carleton University in Ottawa.

Like CFL or like NFL?

Yeah, he was obsessed with this Canadian football player.

He wanted to join one of the seven to 12 teams called the Rough Riders.

Like one time, one time when he like advocated for drunk driving, he was wearing a Toronto Argonauts jersey and the Toronto Argonauts had to be like, please don't do that.

Yeah.

Like the Toronto Argonauts had to release a statement that like we don't support drunk driving.

So what happened is basically Franc Ford went to Carleton University in Ottawa.

He tried to join the college team.

He may have joined, he may have not, but he never played in a game.

After one semester, he quit and then just took a job at his dad's company in sales.

Oh, man, that's that's that's sad, actually, you know?

So, but you talk about the Ford's house, right?

So, for decades, what position did he play, by the way?

I think he would have probably been a linebacker.

Uh-huh.

Rob Ford running back.

I don't think he's a running back.

Yeah.

Think about the positions where they put our biggest, heftiest guys.

Yeah.

No, yeah.

He was, he was, he was the world.

He was a running back who just couldn't tackle.

He was very slow, but you couldn't move him.

He was more of a lumbering back.

A very tight end indeed.

So, no, for decades, they would hold an annual barbecue for the entire city on the grounds of their house in Etobicoke, right?

Like, because Doug Ford Sr.

is trying to be this like political power player.

And this continues every year until like 2012, when like just thousands of people just park on their normal residential street.

He says it was an open house.

Is it illegal to just be cool?

And how?

Is it illegal to have a million friends?

It would draw thousands of guests who would choke the parking lot of a nearby plaza with their cars and lined up to enter the muddy grounds of the Ford home at the end of their dead end street.

A band that included city councilors entertained the crowd, and Councillor Doug Ford's daughters soared into the air as part of a cheerleading display.

I need to know more about the city councilors band.

Yeah, right?

I need to know more about that.

We're Doug Ford and the Wailing Alderman.

Let's go.

The sissy hole steps.

The Nathan Phillips Squares.

Nathan Phillips and the Squares.

There we go.

There it is.

If you're in Toronto, that would be funny to you.

I laugh politely, Annie.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm writing it down and I'm putting it in my pocket.

So next year, when I go back to Canada, as I do once a year, I'll show it to people on a piece of paper

on the light rail, and they'll have a chuckle.

I think more mayors should have an accompanying band made of city council members.

This is a kind of like the kind of a Paul Schaefer situation.

You know, you can like throw to them, they'll load like three bars of brick house or something.

Yeah, when I get a mailer for a city council person running for office, there should be a picture of them holding the instrument they're going to play in the band.

So I can strategically vote for what kind of band it's going to be.

It's like we've got a trombone guy well it's like you know the the city councillor's band like put out a couple of punk albums but i know what's coming next after you do that is a dance punk album so i see my counselor has a corg in their photo like a little keyboard and i'm like okay well i'm gonna i'm gonna vote for them because i know that's where the creatively they should be moving Okay, so, okay, so this one promises to fund schools, but he's got a trombone in the photo, and I don't want to make a ska band.

Trumpet, muted or unmuted?

So they say, we've hired a security firm and even have a couple paid duty police officers, and we'll see what happens.

Said Councillor Doug Ford on the eve of the last event.

This is the best security plan you can have.

We'll see what happens.

By the way, I have Anthony Chiklis from the Shield in my basement attacking people like Cato from the Pink Panther.

Every so often, he's just going to try and jump you.

So every guest gets issued a shotgun loaded with rock salts.

Just, you know, be aware of it.

But otherwise, really feel the space, enjoy the experience.

So.

I started choking.

Oh, my God.

How did Rob Forne govern?

Quite personally, because this is all he ever knew.

So when he was mayor, what he would mostly do is he would give people his phone number and tell them to call him to solve their problems because he thought that how you do politics.

And he was, in addition to being a...

He was trying to be boss tweed so bad.

Yes.

He was trying to be boss tweed in an era where you couldn't like shave people and have them vote twice.

It doesn't doesn't work.

The city's too big and complicated.

Also, when there was only 15 people in the city.

Yeah, you could do that.

Yeah, like it's like he's kind of having like the block party of the mind by giving up his phone number in a lot of ways.

The block party of the mind is what I call weekend in the city.

So he was a very sincere, if very evil person.

Put that on the fucking tombstone.

Yeah, go and put that on Rob Ford's tombstone.

So like, cause I, he's a clown, but he's also like a villain.

Like he's personally abusive.

He's violent.

Oh, like the Joker.

Like the Joker.

Oh, geez.

He thinks crime is funny.

Two boats in the middle of the Toronto question mark river.

It's a lake.

It's two boats on the way to Billy Bishop Airport.

That's right.

One of them is rigged with tickets so people can get to New York.

The other will stay in Toronto.

It's the world's shortest ferry at Billy Bishop Airport that goes one minute across the little canal there.

Yeah.

And there's one full of prisoners.

Yeah.

So, but he was, you're right.

He was a Tammany Hall machine politician transported in time.

Like he and his brother had a news talk radio show that where they used to be like their own Russia's limbaug for years, right?

And they used it to just like as a bully pulpit to attack political enemies, defend allies.

R.I.P.

Rob Ford, you would have loved podcasts.

He had a show on Fox called Ford Nation that ran for one episode because it was so because they were so unpredictable and hard to make that it was the sorry Sun News, which is like the Rupert Murdoch's Canadian operation.

They dropped it after one episode.

Then they made a YouTube show.

Tremendous.

And I think what's interesting about the idea of him being a Tammany Hall guy also, because this is like what my understanding of Rob Ford is, is that he became the mayor because Toronto incorporated a bunch of its suburbs into the city.

The dividing line on electing Rob Ford was not like, oh, there were some wards that did vote for him in the city center and some that didn't in the suburbs.

It was 100%

down the line.

Suburbs voted for it, downtown did not.

Yeah.

And like, and like they had added the suburbs, right, basically fairly recently.

And so it's interesting to be like, I'm going to make, I'm going to be a machine politician for the suburbs.

That's what he says.

It feels insane to me to be like, I'm doing Tammany.

I'm doing Tammany Hall, but like, there's like driveways.

Gangs of New York, but they're like doing this in the background of a Ben Folds video.

Yeah.

And they have to keep getting in a car to drive 30 seconds to go talk to each other.

No, it's this scene where they're like walking to the fight at the five ways, but the walk takes 45 minutes.

There's no sidewalks.

They have to cross a strode.

So

let's talk a little.

Let's see his personal style, the tradition he comes from.

Let's talk about the timeline, right?

Which is that he gets married in 2000 after working at Deco Labels and Tags and kind of building a political reputation through these annual barbecues that they have at their house.

And he's elected to a term on the Toronto City Council for Etobicoke in 2000.

He immediately got a reputation as a spending hawk, but he

and he started sort of saying some quite

odd things.

For example, he argued against spending money on a suicide prevention barrier on the Prince Edward Viaduct, suggesting that that money should be spent, quote, round up the child molesters who are the main cause of people jumping off bridges.

That's such a perfect dumb guy thing.

Like, that's not even a crack thing.

That's just like

the dumbest person you know believes this.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

An evidence-based approach of why are people committing suicide?

Because of the chomos.

God fucking chomos.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's like he took a, he took a kind of very Facebook guy deficit hawk position right away.

Like he was a living Facebook comment.

During debates in the 2002 municipal budget, he also got a reputation for insulting his fellow counselors.

Where counselor Giorgio Mamaliti called Ford a goon, and then Ford responded by calling him a scammer and then a Gino boy.

What?

What is a Gino boy?

He does slurs from gangs of New York too.

That's shit.

I heard last heard Daniel Day-Lewis saying.

I've never heard that one.

It sounds like something from like a cyberpunk novel from the 90s.

It's like the Gino Boys are here.

Rob Ford calls you a choom.

Yeah, all right.

Rob Ford suspended like Baron Harkinen with a levitation globe.

Also, calling him a goon is so perfect because he is when you look at a picture of Rob Ford.

He's goon-shaped.

It's like the word cloud that appears when you look at him is goon.

Goon henchman.

Yeah, high and goon.

The funny thing is, Mamolidi complains to the city's human rights office that he's been racially abused.

And then Rob Rob Ford walks out of the council chamber and a reporter says, Hey, didn't you say something racist?

And then Ford was like, You're racist, then walks away.

Debate champs the mind demon.

At a council meeting in 2008, Ford also said, Quote, Those Orientals work like dogs.

Jesus.

When he was called up on it, he said, No, no, I meant that as a compliment.

They work very hard.

Cool.

Yeah.

So he's, this is like, this is what he's like as a city councilor, right?

He is alarmingly racist.

He's alarmingly racist and he will come up with any idea to not spend money.

Like he was, he's someone who was like, hey, it's a city, like city officials are taking taxis and they're like buying pens.

We have to account for every pen so we don't buy any more pens.

He runs for mayor in 2009 after the there's this like garbage strike that really, really, really like upsets people.

Again, mostly in the suburbs, right?

Well, it's stinky.

Benz.

Canada's just big Britain.

Yeah, it's big, cold Britain.

This garbage strike, it's under Mayor David Miller, who's like, you know, who was

a normal mayor, liberal.

And Ford is like, oh, we're going to privatize garbage pickup in the West End.

We're going to give it to the mob.

Well, essentially.

I'm the anti-Giuliani.

I'm going to.

So he's, yeah, oh, Giuliani, all these like New York guys are like, where are we going to get a corrupt garbage contract?

They're all filing extraordinary alien visas to go to Canada.

He's elected

in 2010 exclusively on the strength of his outlying suburb support.

The other thing he loves is subways because he thinks that light rail, he doesn't like that it has the word light in it.

He thinks that it's for pussies.

He hates streetcars.

Let him cook.

He's correct.

Yeah.

So he wants to basically build more subways out to the suburbs, which is like, that sort of makes sense because Toronto Transit is terrible.

Like Toronto is never supposed to be Canada's first city.

It was always Canada's Chicago.

Montreal was Canada's New York.

The problem is, is that Quebec nationalism, basic or Quebec separatism, scared all the big companies to Toronto.

Well, they did keep fucking kidnapping people.

Well, yes.

But that's not unreasonably.

And so what happens is like Canada's Chicago turned into Canada's New York kind of overnight in the 1970s and 80s, but the infrastructure never got built.

You know, New York is

the Canadian New York, Toronto, Chicago of New York in a lot of ways.

Doing the thing of being like there are actually more Canadians living in New York than in Canada.

New York is the largest Canadian city.

In many ways,

yeah, Canada's the Toronto New York.

Yeah.

The campaign was plagued by scandal, wouldn't you be surprised to know?

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Because he got a driving under the influence conviction in 1999 in Florida.

However, that scandal increased his vote share by 10% in the suburbs.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Awesome.

After it was revealed that he was banned from high school football coaching, he raised like an additional tens of thousands of Canadian dollars in campaign contributions overnight.

Why?

We are going to go into that.

So we're going to do these one at a time.

So details of the 1999 Florida arrest became widely known.

He acknowledged the incident on his radio show, saying the following.

A lot of people drink and drive.

I just got caught.

You know what?

He is correct in that a lot of people do it and he was caught.

He's not, he's, he's a lot of things here, but he's not a liar.

He is the, he is an id.

He is a suburban id.

Like more than anything else, uh, he represents the same kind of like, because one of the things you'll notice as we go through this is he vibrates with a nervous energy.

Like many of his like outbursts are quite spontaneous.

He's not a planner.

He just, he loves his car.

He loves drinking.

He loves to text and drive and drink and drive.

And he thinks he should be able to run over anyone he wants.

He's vibrating because he's channeling the suburban energies.

He's a conduit, and he's vibrating at their exact frequency.

He's a kind of avatar.

Yeah.

Essentially, he's the avatar of a street without a sidewalk on it called like the Vales of Castlemore.

So, when the police officer asked Ford for his license and registration, Ford got out of the car, threw his hands up in the air, and said, Ugh, just take me to jail.

Ford also took all the money out of his pockets and car and threw it at the police officer.

was as as like attempted bribery as spite as

just in disgust yeah it's it's i think it was all of the above maybe maybe this will work this will do something yeah this is an unacceptable situation you use money on cop

unclear how

how cop money money cop money cop you thought he was using it as a weapon

he was like i learned this little ditty from Paul Kicklis.

Yeah, Paul Kicklis's signature

was he would take all the money he had on you and just throw it at you.

And while you were confused, he would like do a sick, like, like high kick and kick you in the chin.

No, he would, he would, he would, like, fosse money at you, and it would cut your head off.

I've seen your big-ass Canadian coins.

I mean, you know.

So Ford appeared to be acting nervous.

And after searching him, the officer found a marijuana cigarette in his right pants pocket.

Difficult when you're drunk as well, to like throw only money and not your weed joint at the cop.

Yeah.

It'd be very funny.

It was like,

I meant to bribe you.

Shit.

I just admitted to drink this.

I'm shocked he didn't just put the joint in the cop's mouth.

Like, maybe this will work.

Intimate.

What, like training day?

Be like, oh, yeah, you were high when you stopped me.

One cop is only bribable with weed.

One is only bribeable with cash.

Yeah.

Bribing with with weed will come back later by the way oh god basically he pleaded no contest to the drunk driving charge they dropped the marijuana charge so this like emerged and it made him more popular like this the idea of him just taking a wad of bills and like knuckleballing it at the coffee street

so how did he get banned from high school football because remember rob ford is a passionate like school football guy he loves canadian football maybe maybe too passionate i worry so he was fired by a toronto catholic school as a volunteer coach after he made disparaging remarks to a TV network about parents and their children.

He characterized the parent community in the interview as not caring about their kids and said that the students were involved in gangs and guns, but if it weren't for him, they'd be in jail.

So concern, this is now August 2012, so this is while he's mayor, but he still like raises money off the back of it.

So concerns about his behavior stretch back to like 2012.

According to briefing notes prepared by the director of communications John Yan, Mayor Ford was upset because a fellow coach, John Rowiski, had banned practices until the start of the school school year.

The mayor was very heated, swearing, and challenging Mr.

Rowiski to a fight.

He started throwing wads of bills at him.

He said, I'll get my buddy kick list.

Principal Ugo Rossi had to step in.

The mayor later apologized.

The same document titled, Critical Incidents Involving Mayor Ford at Don Bosco High School, outlines other accusations, including Mr.

Ford bribing custodians in cash to keep the school open in summer.

He's trying to fight them.

Delaying a mandatory criminal background check for himself and all his coaching staff, then trying to rush the paperwork through police chief Bill Blair, basically being like, oh, yeah, I want to hire a bunch of convicted criminals who are my friends to help coach the high school team.

Have you seen the movie The Dirty Dozen?

We're going to do that to a high school football team.

It's not all going to be pretty.

Oh, so it's illegal to have an all goon football coaching staff?

Yeah, the first football team to just all have like blackjacks in the like back of their backs.

Isn't he just trying to do the plot of the movie The Longest Yard?

I guess so.

Yeah,

but like reverse.

Well, because he considers society to be a prison.

So he showed up late and appeared visibly inebriated at the final practice for the Metro Bowl Championship game.

He took players on an unsanctioned overnight trip to play a football team in Peterborough, Ontario, a different town.

And he allegedly made his players roll around in goose poo and swore at them after a game they won against Father Henry Carr School in 2012.

misreading the scoreboard and hazing a bunch of children yeah after a game they won and he didn't get fired for a while after that it took so long it took him disparaging the like parents of the school to get him fired not the goose after a game they won is so confusing and as well like i know i know canadians you like your football right but like it's not Texas big there right like no not at all it's hockey is what we care about yeah like this, this is all like, this sounds like the shit you hear about, like youth hockey.

This is an insane thing to do over Canadian football, a thing I forget exists.

Yeah.

You're rolling around, pointing to a kid you're making roll around and goose shit and being like, you're never going to make it on the Argonauts now.

The Hamilton Tigers will never draft you.

In your city, barely remember exists.

You're never going to get, it's like, you're never going to get drafted by the takes out phone, Google's Hamilton Tiger Cats now.

So, but the thing is, he still loved his coaching job.

It was the most important thing he felt he ever did.

At one point, when he was being sued for defamation as mayor in 2012, just before getting kicked out of his Don Bosco coaching job, this is because he alleged that like someone building like a waterfront like cheesy Geno's restaurant or whatever was like doing so corruptly.

And he was being sued.

And the mayor was scheduled to testify on Thursday afternoon.

but told the court he was unavailable at that time.

It transpired that he had to coach his high school football team in the quarterfinal that afternoon, which

his team, the Don Bosco Eagles, beat the Northern Red Knights 31-0.

Yeah, but he had to stay after the haze all of them.

Yeah, he had to go get the big gun, then fire his goose poop at the children.

So, this is another thing.

This is one of the earlier sort of major mayoral scandals that Rob Ford faced.

He became embroiled in a conflict of interest row.

after he was accused of using the City of Toronto logo to solicit funds for a Canadian football charity that he ran.

So in August 2010, the Integrity Commissioner ruled that Ford had not followed the City Council's code of conduct and had abused his council position by using official letterheading council resources and fundraising letters for his like Rob Ford Football Foundation for Tots.

And he raised like $40,000, but mostly those donors include like lobbyists and the clients of lobbyists and companies with which the city of Toronto does business.

Just a kind of like football slush fund.

He just like forgets that like he's not boss tweed and there is some oversight which he can't he constantly forgets that and then like it comes back to bite him so he said beautiful if it wasn't for this foundation these kids wouldn't have a chance and then to ask me to pay for it out of my own pocket personally there's just no sense to this the money is gone all the money donated has been spent on what football equipment

So

and this like conflict of interest thing, right?

This was this was also a bit of a coup by city council who was like, this guy's insane.

He has to stop being mayor.

Toronto doesn't really have like a 25th amendment, does it?

Yeah, it doesn't.

And we really, well, we kind of built one out of spare parts at the end of the Ford mayoralty.

Eventually, the Supreme Court of Canada exonerates Ford on basically a procedural technicality and he continues being mayor.

But he's like, his corruption is very small, small time.

Right.

So he's the focus of more controversy when, according to a report in the Toronto Star, he personally asks a number of city officials to approve drainage and road repairs outside like his dad's company's headquarters before a 50th anniversary party.

That's so small time.

But it's also so stupid and so obvious.

Like, why wouldn't, like, that's like the most obvious I'm doing like cronyism shit.

Yeah.

It's so easy to find.

Like, this is the kind of thing that was beneath Rudy Giuliani.

And very little has been beneath Rudy Giuliani, you know?

I always say, like, Rob Ford is someone who is just 5% too stupid to be corrupt well.

Maybe not five, maybe about 75%.

I was going to say.

And he, so he says, oh, what do you mean?

Is that I get thousands of such requests on behalf of homeowners and other businesses.

Quote, someone has a pothole in front of their house.

I go in front of their business.

I go out and I fix it, just like I did for our company.

That's Clay Davis shit.

Like, I'm giving out my business card.

I'm always giving out money.

You know, that is, that is, though, like how he governed, right?

Like, it's not even that he just did it for him.

Like, there was a, there was actually a test done in the Canadian, in the canadian media like okay we're gonna call every like toronto local politician report a pothole and see who calls us back and rob ford's like the only one who calls back within a day because that's just what he thinks politics is is glad handing horse trading and giving out favors he he also had a lot of energy from the crack so he was the only one who called us back but he called us at like five in the morning speaking some kind of hybrid of like portuguese and english

so uh describes other wasteful behavior by the mayor So he had this thing called the sandwich run, which is a two and a half hour task that he would get staffers to do, where they would drive to a sandwich shop in Etobicoke, buy a sub-sandwich for Ford's daughter, Stephanie, and hand deliver it to her at elementary school.

Wait, this is good.

Did he use this as like a punishment?

He was very paranoid about all of his staffers.

So he liked to keep them moving and not let them work on anything for too long.

And he also liked to have them always reporting on one another.

yeah i work for ontario stalin like i get home from work i have my wife write down everything i said and what rob ford laughed at and what he didn't making my wife write down the sandwich order when i get home basically this is in a book by his former chief of staff when asked why ford doesn't buy the sandwich that previous night in a tobacco and just pack it for her he said it has to have tomatoes and they get soggy if it's not freshly made staffers would also be called upon last minute to change light bulbs at his house or replace the batteries in his kids' toys.

Incredible.

He describes several duties, including buying cigarettes, bleach, and laundry detergent, and delivering Diet Coke to his wife, Renata.

Just all at the same time: I need cigarettes, bleach, laundry detergent, and diet coke.

We had quite a party the other day.

What the hell was happening in that basement?

This is like if you hit the boss from the Devil Wears Prada in the head with a hammer.

Just you get you work for Rob Ford.

You get a call at like 6 a.m.

And it's like, I need you to come over to help me clean up the remains of Michael checklist.

I need a plastic tub.

I need a big, a bunch of acid.

Just getting the call that you need to source a bunch of goose shit for the hose he's going to spray a teenager.

For winning.

So basically, right, he doesn't end up being very powerful for very long.

you don't say the guy who like calls you to be like i need you to drive like 40 minutes out of town to a goose farm because i know a goose farmer and you're going to collect all this goose shit in a big tub and bring it back to like a catholic high school where i coach football didn't last in public office

it's well so because he's like he's elected in 2010 and then he gets like kind of two and it gets two years before he really starts being too before his like alcoholism makes it impossible for him to govern, right?

He's he starts by just canceling, canceling like small taxes, privatizing waste removal, which of course is a fucking disaster.

Of course.

The service kind of worked, but people's jobs got much worse and it was way more expensive than the city just doing it itself.

That's the first time that's ever happened with privatizing a public good.

That's crazy that this happened.

Who could have possibly predicted this happening?

And like all of the subway stuff that he that he voted on, which is like to build various subway extensions to like not have light rail and so on and so on, all of that would be like reduced as he got drunker and drunker and drunker and the council pared back more and more and more of his powers.

It's like a king.

And I mean, I don't mean that as a kind of like, in terms of exercise of power, I just mean like he's getting more and more like gouty, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right?

Like, cause he, it's the crack video comes out in like 2013, but like, he become, he's impossible to govern through like 2012, even.

He's a lame duck king, which is a very funny phrase to think about.

I think it was the,

I might be wrong.

I think it's the Nez Perce in Louisiana, the Indigenous Society that was there, but they had their ruler was called like the sun, and he like lived in a village alone, and he could do whatever he wants in the village.

This feels a little bit like

that's the best way of implementing monarchy I've ever heard.

Yeah.

He loves lying.

He cannot stop lying about things that are easily, easily proven.

And it's more like he was always also like, he was using crack since the mid-2000s.

It just started to go off the rails and become uncontrollable and unhideable in 2012.

Given who was trafficking the crack cocaine, this does make him another, in fact, the first right-wing political leader functionally overthrown by the CIA and Ronald Reagan.

Okay, it was not, by the way, it was not Denez Paris.

I'm sorry.

I'll figure it out later.

Yes.

Right.

So it's very little sort of like policy discussions I have for him.

It's mostly like, you know, he gets arrested multiple times for like reading while driving, texting and driving, drinking and driving.

When you say reading, I'm picturing like Anna Karenina like open on his knees, you know?

He's just like weeping.

There was a very funny article written in actually the St.

Catherine Standard by the mayor of St.

Catharines, St.

Catharines being the city where I went to high school called

Reading and Driving Aren't Part of the Job, say local mayors.

So he was reading like documents.

So Niagara Falls mayor Jim Diodati says the mayor's job is so busy.

You try to be as efficient as you can with your time, but you have to do it in a safe way.

Because the other thing about Rob Ford is that he refused to have a driver because he thought it would cost too much and he always liked to just drive

if i get a driver i worry he won't be drunk enough to drive me like i like which is dangerously yeah so yeah it's very funny it's like for when asked questions about the picture again they talk about him lying he would just like yeah that's probably me but i was too busy to i'm too busy to remember

i'm too busy working every day on a decreasing number of subway stations

I'm building a subway station in my, in my basement currently

for Kickless.

You got to get Kickless in and out.

It's called Kickless Memorial Avenue.

In my dad's basement.

In my dad's basement.

Just a bunch of Canadian KKK guys

using the turnstiles at Kickless Memorial.

Listen, you know what?

People parking on my street.

Let me build the...

The trade station.

Instead of like resurfacing your dad's driveway as a kind of corrupt present, you just build him a subway station.

Everybody's commute has one extra stop and you're just like what this wasn't fucking here yesterday what

I see a couch out the window of the subway car

very strange so um so basically right the other thing is he finally does get a driver but it's his goon Sandro Lisi Alessandro Lisi beautiful name beautiful guy like again a friend of his who is also involved in like in his um in his older brother's business you don't say his older brother's business of hash dealing yeah i believe so yes.

So

he went from his older brother's friend to an occasional driver for Rob Ford.

When he's reading documents.

Yeah.

It's his main goon.

But I want to end part one on what is famously known in Toronto as the beer market story.

Oh, God.

So as you know, Toronto is a city of goons and idiots.

That's why they call it hogtown.

We love to have

a sort of beer bar that plays dance music near the financial district think of it that way okay right

i've i've been to that bar you've been to beer market no i've been to a bar like that yeah trying trying to find somewhere to drink near the toronto reference library so beer market is of course spelled b-i-e-r-m-a-r-k-t this is saint patrick's day 2012.

oh christ okay yeah And was only revealed in 2013 as part of pressure to get him to resign.

So this is from a write-up in Poland.

Someone sat on this for a year,

Rob was keen to attend a party he'd heard about on the Esplanade, a short, bar-lined street, a 10-minute walk from City Hall in the financial district.

Troubling in itself that the mayor is like, Yeah, I got to go into this cool party.

You know, I don't think mayor is a cool enough job that you should be thinking about cool parties.

So, Earl, his chief of staff, Earl Provost,

takes the role of basically the person desperately trying to keep a scandal from happening.

Just nightmare escort mission, Rob Ford down the Esplanade.

You have to keep anything back.

This is the mayor.

Everybody knows who he is, and he wants to get lit.

This guy's running through 45 Michael Claytons a week that are just killing themselves or quitting.

My fixers keep just disappearing.

My sort of Claytons per hour is a very high value.

CPH.

So the funny thing is, in 2015, a couple years after this happened, Earl Provost was announced as the new executive director of the Ontario Liberal Party.

Party president Saloni Wariak said in a news release: Earl is a strong, lifelong liberal and veteran of countless campaigns.

Provost worked on Ford's campaign team and later in the mayor's office as director of stakeholder and council relations and named chief of staff in the summer of 2012, working alongside Ford through the height of the crack-smoking scandal.

And one high-profile incident, city documents show Ford yelled and swore at Provost on St.

Patrick's Day, and that's the story we're going to talk about here.

So, Rob, his two guests, and two anxious staffers left City Hall and hailed a cab to go to the Esplanade.

During the ride to the bar.

That's an awkward cab ride already, given the number of people.

Like, what if he has to sit in the front unless it's a minivan?

I'm squeezed in the back with three Michaels Clayton.

Rob Fort's probably trying to carjack the fucking thing.

He sees a cab.

He presses Triangle.

He doesn't hold it.

He's trying to throw the guy out of the front because he wants to drive himself.

And he has been drinking.

Well, he has been drinking.

You're right.

So Rob initially directed a number of racial remarks at the cab driver, calling him a pea slur, even though he was not from Pakistan.

Uh-huh.

I mean, I'm sure he really cares about the accuracy.

Then he flung a handful of business cards at the driver from the back seat, saying, I am Rob Ford.

I am the mayor of Toronto.

If there's something I could do for you, please call me.

Just really like muscle confusion.

Just like, yeah, I will do you favors, but I will also call you a slur.

The last guy to do this gambit was Huey Long, I'm pretty certain.

He pulled a string on his suit, releasing a cloud of dollar bills and goose shit.

The fact that he had like a kind of a fistful of business cards,

did he mix up the pocket?

Was he trying to do cash?

Buy multiple instead?

And he was like, each one of these business cards is redeemable for one Rob Ford favor.

Like, that guy has access to the planning process for like 50 subway stations now.

Now, let's see Rob Ford's business card.

Crumpled up, soaked in beer and pits, and flung through the window of a cab.

It's beautiful.

Oh my God, it even has a sweat stain.

I didn't know, I didn't know a business card could have pit stains, but like.

So, also, his guests were likely sex workers as well.

Uh-huh.

Oh, so it's illegal to party now, is what you're telling me.

At the beer market bar, Earl Provost tried to secure a private room so so Rob could be kept away from the public eye.

Imagine the kind of people who go into Canadian local government at a kind of like administrative level, right?

The kind of people who then rise to become like, you know, head of the like provincial like Liberal Party.

The most like died in the wolf, straight and narrow nerds you can imagine as like babysitting this like drunken, washed up former linebacker and his sex workers.

Yeah, like, but you, you, as you say, is the world's hardest escort mission.

Like, I'm imagining Rob Ford that night as a kind of like baby's day out.

Like, he just keeps wandering off.

He's a kind of like drunk pinball.

Like,

so there, the mayor and his friends partied for some time, drinking a huge amount of alcohol and eating chicken wings.

At some point, a young female friend of Alana, the sort of alleged sex worker, arrived.

Then the bar DJ and his girlfriend joined in as well.

I will say this.

He sounds like he knows how to party.

Yeah.

The DJ is trying to catch coked up Mr.

Magoo.

Though the press would later report that Rob snorted cocaine off the arm of one of the young women, his staffers don't corroborate that.

Hey, I guess that coming up immediately.

So eventually Rob decided he wanted to go back to City Hall.

On the way out of the bar, he tried to dance on the dance floor, but just fell over.

We're doing afters at City Hall, everybody.

He was assisted and dragged into the cab by his friends and bar personnel.

Seven Michael Claytons dragging him into the cab.

You're a Torontonian, and you just see this beautiful tableau, like the photo of the drunks fighting in Manchester in the evening, right?

And you just go, yeah, that's the mayor.

That's that's the mayor of the city that this is.

That's the guy who's in charge of all the stuff.

This is the guy who mostly works on like garbage collection.

Yeah, back at the office, he then broke into tears and became angry, ragging on, quote, the liberal hacks who he worked with him, including

Earl Provost.

Without warning, Ford became violent.

He pushed Earl off a couch, then loomed over him with his arm cocked and his fist clenched.

When the others protested, Rob turned his wrath on them.

He charged into him with his left hand out, grabbed him by the collar, slammed him into the wall, right arm pulled back and ready to punch him.

This is an impressive amount of energy to have after that much.

I mean, I guess cocaine.

Cocaine.

Cocaine.

This is when you need someone on staff with a tranquilizer rifle.

Like he's a rhinoceros.

We had to dart the mayor again.

We're doing catch and release with the mayor.

Just

Rob Ford coming towards the podium next

press conference.

He's just got a tag in one ear.

So Olivia E.

Gondik, senior policy advisor and council liaison, who was also his former executive assistant, arrived in Rob's office, but sensing imminent trouble, she stayed to help the sapphire sapphire.

Rob, completely, now completely blacked out, began speaking to her in an inappropriate manner, describing in explicit detail what he'd like to do sexually with her.

And then, when called up on that by the press, he then said, he apologized, saying, Oh, yeah, the last thing, Olivia Gondak, it says that I wanted to eat her pussy, but Olivia Gondak, I've never said that to her in my life.

I'd never do that.

I'm happily married.

I've got more than enough pussy at home.

Incredible.

Wow.

Oh, so it's a crime to love your wife?

It says, says, I've got more than enough to eat at home.

Specifically.

Like, imagine that, though.

Just like the rhinoceros mayor of the city begins, like, throwing his, like,

assistants around, then wheels and is like, I'm going to eat your pussy.

That's a trillion times more threatening than him just saying he wants to fuck you or whatever.

Like, the specificity of that is, like, so uncomfortable.

However, Gondeck had sharply rebuked him, stopping him cold, that he was drunk and he should go go home.

Rob sat down and put his head in his hands like an embarrassed little boy.

This is all still from the liberty.

Cocaine was wearing off at this point.

I think that is kind of what happened.

But of course,

there was more.

Rob wandered around City Hall with an open bottle of whiskey in his hand until staff corralled him back into his office.

And the staffers guided Rob out of the building toward a taxi.

He's got like seven people just like manhandling him at this point.

First, he caused a ruckus at the security desk near the building's main entrance because he was convinced his car had been stolen, even though he hadn't driven to work that day.

He made more lewd remarks to a female city hall security guard.

And then they got him into a cab where he once again racially abused the driver and threw business cards at him.

It's just, he has a set of processes, right?

Like you say, it's pure id.

And the first thing that comes to mind, it repeats itself.

You know, if he has fully automated rob for it,

he sees a woman, he tells her he wants to eat her pussy.

He sees a cab driver, he like misidentifies him racially, abuses him racially, and then throws a bunch of business cards at him.

So Earl got in the cab with him to make sure that he went to the mayor's house.

This one poor nerd who has been forced to babysit this awful man.

Rob then ordered Earl to get out on the highway.

Earl refused and instructed a driver to carry on.

Both Rob and Earl got out of the cab, but while Earl Earl was paying the driver, Rob jumped into his black Cadillac escalade and accelerated so rapidly out of the driveway that Earl had to dive for safety, lest he'd be flattened by the mayor.

Just like back home, you know, and just thinking, you know what, I could really do right now is go for a drive.

You know, to really get the crack out of my system.

A nice drive.

So at that point,

this is when he kind of stops governing because most of the people around him are like trying to protect the staff from the mayor.

Or that's when?

Yeah.

I mean, he's basically just become every story about my drunkest college roommate who did once try to get out of a cab on Storo Drive in Boston, which is a highway.

That's where the story ends.

That means that like drive off the crack cocaine is a strategy that works.

Or at least didn't kill him that one time.

He is that good of a driver when he's high that it works for him.

Yeah,

he's the Kuisatz Hatarak of Toronto.

He's just this guild navigator in a Cadillac escalate.

He uses crack instead of spice.

Yeah, I'm waiting with my hooks for the big Cadillac to emerge from the dunes, smoking crack.

So basically, right, this is, it all sort of begins to fall apart for Rob Ford of February 23rd, 2013, where Rob attends this party for the city's elite called the Garrison Ball, which is a fundraiser for like military families.

The mayor was two hours late being driven around by this Sandro Leasey character, his occasional driver and main goon.

And Ford was described as not looking good.

This is an excerpt from Mark Toey's book, Uncontrollable, The Mayoralty of Rob Ford.

I punched in Sandro's number and he answered.

I introduced myself and asked him to hand the phone to Rob.

I heard Rob's voice.

Yeah?

He sounded rough as hell and we were only a syllable into the conversation.

Hi boss, how's it going?

I asked, sounding as neutral as I could.

I wanted to see how we sounded.

He launched into a volley of words at me, ultra-fast, choppy, and largely incoherent.

Boss, the event here started two hours ago and everyone's already eating dinner.

If you come now, it'll just be awkward.

I've already made excuses for you that your plane was delayed.

They know you're not coming.

Why don't you head home and take the night off?

He said, I'm okay, brother.

I'll be there.

Normally, he called me buddy.

He called everybody buddy.

When he was drunk or or high, I became his brother.

I insisted, Rob, please don't come.

You sound rough.

And also, there's no place here for your kids.

They'll be miserable.

He exploded.

What's wrong with my kids?

Don't you ever say shit about my kids.

You're way out of line.

That's such a British dumb guy thing.

That's almost verbatim, a bit in brugge.

They're great kids.

I've never said anything bad about them.

I'm just saying this is a black tie event.

It's very crowded and very formal, and there are no other kids here.

They'll be miserable.

Why put them through that?

You leave my fucking kids out of this, poor growl.

Oh my god.

You know what he is?

I always described him as Canada's Don Vito.

So basically, please, I'm begging you, don't come.

He says, I'm good, brother.

I'm coming.

Then he hangs up.

I backed up in front of him, trying to use my body to block his path to the ballroom, but he kept saying, get out of my way, Mark.

I'll drop you if I have to.

I'll fucking mock you.

Just then, two middle-aged women in expensive gowns returned from the ladies' room.

One of them looked him up and down and said, You should slow down and stop acting like a bull in a china shop.

So he tries to like straighten his tie, check the kids' coats.

It's the meanest thing a Canadian can say to you.

It's a Canadian insult.

You're devastated right now.

Yeah.

So Rob was then like shaking hands and

he was like shaking hands.

He was glad-handing and all this stuff.

And then other counselors are like, hey, he doesn't look good.

And, you know, the chief of staff is like, he's not feeling well.

He's tired just after coming back from Chicago.

Then he sits down at a table that is not his right beside the podium, surprising the guests there because it wasn't his table.

Every table is your table when you're the mayor.

Ford refused to move.

He made the haters become his waiters at this table of success.

That's right.

He refused to move.

And then

the second the speech ended, I got Rob is on his feet and said, Let's get out of here.

We stood out.

And then he got back to his car, stood outside, but he rambled incoherently.

Another successful evening for the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.

When they then started driving, picked up another man.

The mayor called him Bruno.

He was an older man with a thin, nervous-looking energy and rumpled clothes.

Rob immediately started abusing him, calling him names, and pretending to fight with him.

He pushed Bruno, claiming he could beat the shit out of him.

He aggressively kicking him three or four times.

Bruno scampered away like a whipped dog.

What the hell?

I don't know.

This is such a weird guy.

Rob Ford getting high, going for a drive, and just completing some side quests.

He said, he's, I'm sorry I've screwed everything up, but I'll be okay because I have money.

I'm sorry for guys like you who don't have anything, no wife and no money.

Oh my God.

Yeah, an exclamation point appeared above that guy's head, so he had to go find it.

If I got read like that by a man who was high on crack, I would re-evaluate a lot of things about my life.

So he talked about how we should all party together.

He would, quote, get some whores for us.

He went on to talk about how much fun he'd had in Chicago partying in such a way with his brother and Jim Flarity.

They partied and partied and partied and he talked about drugs and sex workers and it's hard to know how much of the story was true.

So basically, right, basically, this is the event where it all takes a turn for the worse.

That was pre-worse.

Yes.

Yeah, this is, this is just the pre-drinks.

This is the event where it all would have, like, where he became, it became unhideable how all of his problems with addiction.

But then Rob Ford woke up on a Sunday, a sunny May day, May 16th to be exact.

Today was going to be a day just like any other in 2013.

Or would it?

That was Rob Ford before the crack thing happened.

And if you want to hear part two of this episode, where we break down the timeline of the Rob Ford crack smoking scandal and after

that will be out on the Patreon next week.

So do look out for that.

Otherwise, we will see you then.

Bye.