Let’s just say it could have been any journalist on a public interest mission casing out the parkland around Rob Ford’s house.
The story was waiting there to be told: an elected official wants to expand his property by acquiring land held in common for all of us. It’s pressingly reportable. And what journo wouldn’t have headed straight to Etobicoke to take a look? How do you get the story if you haven’t got the on-scene?
Daniel Dale was not being inappropriate he was being responsible, and those who buy the mayor’s argument that he was frightened for his family are getting suckered in by his constructed self-victimization, and blatant vigilantism.
Reporters are the first line of defense against unaccountable action, and while we don’t know how the mayor’s bid for taxpayer land will play out, we at least know it will play out in the public gaze.
Dale was evaluating the mayor’s argument to the Toronto Region Conservation Authority that he had a “security” problem that could only be rectified by a new fence and an added plot of TRCA land. Being diligent, Dale went to see what kind of fencing was onsite in the first place. The fact that the Star reporter ended up on the wrong perimeter of the mayor’s property is not relevant to the story.
The TRCA was established to protect watersheds and promote sustainability and one gets a sense of its weighty mission from the Authority’s manifesto: “Our vision is for a new kind of community, The Living City, where human settlement can flourish forever as part of nature’s beauty and diversity.”
So if the mayor of the city wants to purchase some of this land trust, we ought to check out his reasons.
It doesn’t help Ford’s cause, of course, that he has told the media since, that “there’s a little piece of property that I want to extend the fence out to. I have two young kids so I want to build this little fence so they can have, basically, more room to pay in and that’s all it is.”
So which is it: the need for more security, or just the mayor feeling hemmed in by his limited real estate? Either way, if Rob Ford wants public land then it’s a public issue.
And just what kind of person enters an obviously non-menacing situation fist-first? One can approach ambiguous situations with trepidation, worry, annoyance, but what is the characterological makeup of the individual, particularly one with ready access to the most powerful people in this city, who reflexively puts up their dukes when rattled?
Picture if you will, David Miller applying to buy some adjoining public land for his home and then discovering a reporter on the outskirts of his back yard. Picture Miller feeling intruded upon, but heading, nonetheless, back into his house. We pine for the lost civility.
Ford made his cottage the subject of scrutiny by announcing he was holidaying there instead of doing his civic duty at Pride time last year he made his home probe-worthy because he’s seeking to add on some turf owned by us. Fair is fair.
We know what to call those kinds of societies where political officials are allowed to follow their self-interest without reporters dogging their trail.
