I wanted to run to the washroom and vomit, but didn’t like the idea of the mayor’s mother having to clean up after me.
On Wednesday, December 11, I was a journalist covering the Ford family Christmas and in effect a guest at the Ford family home. I was also a person trying (and possibly failing) to reconcile those things with each other and with my conscience. “What the fuck,” I thought, “am I doing here.”
Sitting on a couch in the rec room of Diane Ford’s house, my gaze shifted between the large-screen TV and the opposite set of couches, where Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Frank Di Giorgio sat watching the hockey game. I know nothing about hockey, but I know a lot about the mayor.
In an interview broadcast two days earlier, he had baselessly suggested that one of my press gallery colleagues, the Star’s Daniel Dale, may be a pedophile. The following day, he not only refused to apologize but insisted he stood by his remarks.
And here I had him, cornered, in the basement of the house in which he grew up – the rarest of beasts, to whom access is typically fleeting – right there, relaxing, doing his thing.
I’d been getting a steady stream of criticism via Twitter (including from people I respect) for having gone in the first place, as though it were some kind junket for reporters whose integrity could be purchased for a glass of wine. I recalled the Vice guys hanging out with Kim Jong-un and had to remind myself that it wasn’t their gonzo reporting that was repulsive, but that they’d let themselves lose perspective.
I consulted with my friend David Hains, who was covering the affair for Torontoist. He was next to me on the couch. (He knows about both Rob Ford and hockey.)
We decided to ask the mayor if he’d step outside to answer a couple questions from us. Ford declined, saying he’d already told many outlets that he wouldn’t be doing interviews that night, and if he spoke to us, he’d have to talk to all of them, too. But if we wanted him to wish us a Merry Christmas, he said, he’d be happy to do so.
The mayor was far more polite than he usually is when brushing off the media. This, of course, made things harder.
Hains and I concluded that the only way we could leave with our dignity intact would be to get ourselves kicked out. Shit.
The Ford family compound is off Royal York Road, between Eglinton and Lawrence, near the park named after the late Doug Ford Sr., who’s buried close by. He and wife Diane raised their kids at the house, and she and son Randy still live here. (For quick reference, the Ford siblings are: Kathy, born in 1960 Randy, born in 1962 Doug, born in 1964 and Rob, born in 1969.)
From the street it looks like a two-storey bungalow, from the rear like a mansion. The backyard played host to annual Ford Fest parties until this year, when they held multiple installments in public parks to accommodate larger crowds. (Rob Ford says the yard can hold 5,000 people this might be true, but he’s not known for his facility with figures.)
Inside, the house is like a poorly curated museum with artifacts and art from various regions and eras butting up against each other: rugs, vases… hieroglyphics? It’s not always clear which pieces are genuine and which are reproductions. The mayor says many of the items came from his father’s time in Asia.
There’s so much to look at and examine. Given the perpetual scramble for clues to the Ford mythology, it’s an unusually stimulating abode. You can get lost imagining the significance of anything.
A spiral staircase leads down to the basement, where the first thing you encounter is a photograph of the staircase itself.
The wood-panelled rec room with a bar is decorated as a shrine to the departed patriarch, walls lined with photographs of the senior Ford, news articles about him, letters he received from politicians. We get to see what he looked like when he played high school football. (Spoiler: like his sons.) One wall hosts a framed collection of materials concerning his death, from the Toronto Star obituary to the program for his memorial service to a photograph of his shaken-looking adult children carrying his casket. Other walls have paintings of warplanes.
No one can agree on the animal from which a large skin rug originates. Diane says the person who sold it to her had told her it was bear. Doug says, no, it’s probably deer or maybe cow.
When I arrive just before 7 pm, Gary Crawford is the only councillor there. It’s not his first time in that basement, but he looks as unsure about his own presence as I do.
If civic engagement in the Ford era is driven by a fear of missing out, then its journalism is driven by a fear of blinking at the wrong moment. (As I typed the preceding paragraphs from the comfort of the NOW office, City Council broke out into a musical number.)
Making the decision to attend the Ford family Christmas involved weighing whether I would hate myself more if I went or if I didn’t.
To me, it was equally plausible that the last-minute media invite could have been either just something Doug blurted out and the brothers decided to follow through on or a calculated and cynical attempt to repair relations following the awfulness toward Daniel Dale.
Entering their turf on their terms, with no cameras or recording devices allowed, would inherently place me at a disadvantage and make any actual reporting extremely awkward to conduct. Maybe that was the point.
I kept thinking of Jeff Daniels’s final scene in Speed.
Eventually, I decided it was my journalistic responsibility to put myself in uncomfortable situations. This would be a unique and bizarre trip to Ford Nation, and I might be angry at myself if I passed on the opportunity.
Ben Spurr and I rode a taxi to the house. In rush hour traffic, it took an hour to get there from Church and Shuter.
The party was called for 6, and we pulled up at 6:47. The mayor arrived in his Escalade immediately behind.
Our cab driver asked to take a picture. The mayor, of course, obliged.
“Make yourselves at home.” This was the Fords’ mantra, repeated to me and others throughout the evening.
Having been to several of their eponymous fests, I expected the Fords to be excellent hosts, and they were. Food catered by Panino Cappuccino was served as a buffet: salad, potato wedges, penne alla vodka, vegetables and veal cutlets. I tried a little it was okay. The bar was open, plus a keg of Steam Whistle. I did not see the mayor drink. (I had a glass of water.)
As some Bond villains have shown, there’s no necessary correlation between a person’s decency and their ability to put on a show of hospitality. And to a degree, we reporter-guests were compelled to reciprocate. Any mutual loathing had to simmer beneath a surface of pleasantness that no one wanted to be first to puncture. At least not while there were still things to be learned from playing along.
When the mayor – having granted a request to lead media on a tour of the house – took us over a bridge on the icy backyard deck as O Come, All Ye Faithful blared from outdoor speakers, I was profoundly grateful for the beautiful and mind-bending weirdness of it all. In that moment, I regretted nothing. Ford’s breath visible, he swept his arm across the property, telling us how the Tragically Hip played there when they were starting out and how Raine Maida grew up just over thataway, beyond the fence.
Many of his former employees who’d recently transferred to the deputy mayor’s office showed up, including Earl Provost, his fourth of five chiefs of staff. (None of those who’d explicitly resigned or been fired were there.)
Lobbyist and former councillor Chris Korwin-Kuczynski (“KK”) milled around with his wife, as did past (and likely future) Ward 3 candidate and sometime realtor Ross Vaughan. Vaughan was the person who acted on the mayor’s behalf in his spring 2012 attempt to purchase a piece of parkland adjacent to his property. Dale’s examination of the land had brought him near to the mayor house, which soon led to the false claims about the reporter lurking in Ford’s backyard and taking pictures of his kids. (A week after the Christmas party and upon threat of a lawsuit, Ford ultimately retracted his comments and apologized to Dale.)
There were other friends of the family, but none I recognized from court documents.
Sweeping in, through and around it all were the undercurrents of everything else that was happening, the knowledge of everything the mayor gets up to and has done.
“I know things about you,” I thought. “You know I know things about you. This is horrible.”
The distance between the intuited and the experienced was vertiginous. Like climbing a mountain and sometimes looking down to discover how divorced you’ve become from the earth. There was a shock of remoteness: what am I doing here.
The party was an insight into how the Fords carry on – how they manage to live on a day-to-day basis, with the darkness suppressed or ignored. There was a Christmas carol singalong, and a belting out of Happy Birthday to Rob’s wife, Renata three cakes were iced with her name. (She displayed the same combination of smiles, appreciation and discomfort as anyone fêted in this way.)
Emergency services show up to Rob and Renata’s home with alarming regularity. As recently as August, police responded to a “domestic assault” call.
And here was a basement of people, hosted by the Fords, singing her Happy Birthday. For he’s a jolly good fellow.
I panicked. Did my presence validate their fantasy of normalcy or subvert it? Did having tweeted about Parmesan and red pepper flakes serve to obscure the fact that this was about things other than Parmesan and red pepper flakes? Slander, abuse, addiction, blackmail and all the other allegations encircle this man everywhere but here.
I felt nauseous and gross and sad and scared.
Just the previous day, I watched the mayor use the attention around the “pedophile” scandal to draw media to an announcement about cutting the land transfer tax. When I returned to my office afterward, the stress, repugnance and fatigue finally got to me and I cracked I banged my head against the wall of the washroom and cried. And now, today, I was sitting next to this man, watching him watch hockey on TV. He enjoyed it.
By 9:44, there was nothing left to gain by being there, and potentially much to lose.
The mayor went up to the front hallway, and Hains and I approached him. We asked about his Daniel Dale statements, and as soon as he heard the name, he said, “Again, I’m gonna have to let you go.”
We persisted, asking if he understood the gravity of his comments, why people would find them slanderous, offensive, hurtful.
“I’m gonna have to let you go. Okay? Guys?” he said. “It’s a Christmas party. I think I’ve made myself quite clear. You’re welcome to stay – or you can leave.”
I told him it’d moved me to tears the previous day and asked if he got why that might be. I figured the honesty would be cathartic, and at least distinguish the question from those he normally fields or ignores.
He talked right over it all. “Take care. Thank you very much.”
We left and took a cab back downtown.
When I got home, I tweeted: “That was no less surreal than I expected and far more emotionally exhausting.”
To which a Vancouverite named Simon replied: “That’s an epigram for all of Ford’s mayoralty, really.”
jonathang@nowtoronto.com | @goldsbie
