When word came down that Newstalk 1010 had canned the Ford brothers’ weekly radio show, we thought, “Oh thank god, our Sundays can be ours again!” But given how pear-shaped the Ford mayoralty has gone in recent months (or given how pear-shaped it has always been, maybe), it stands as a definitive, and definitively weird, record of the Ford administration. In commemoration of DJs Rob and Doug’s tenure, we’ve put together a few of their on-air highlights.
1. 2012 (ongoing): Dave from Scarborough
Over several months, long-time Ford family friend David Price makes at least six fawning calls to the show without any of the three men divulging who he is. He identifies himself variously as “Dave from Scarborough,” “Dave from Etobicoke,” and “Dave from Georgetown” and unleashes a stream of pro-Ford verbal sludge, calling the plastic bag levy “fascism,” referring to left-wing council members as “comrades,” and gushing about the mayor’s volunteer work as a football coach. Price was later hired on as the mayor’s “director of logistics and operations,” which doesn’t sound like a made-up job at all.
2. March 11, 2012: What Jack taught Rob
Discussing the impending by-election to fill the seat formerly held by Jack Layton, Rob fondly recalls the time they spent on Council together: “I probably voted with Jack less than 1 per cent of the time, but he taught me how to be diplomatic and professional, and the first thing he said is, ‘Rob, you’re not gonna agree with everything we say,’ but he taught me how to be a leader, and I swear, a lot of the things come in really handy now.”
3. April 29, 2012: “Why does he still have a job?”
Doug uttered those words about the city’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. David McKeown, who angered the Fords by recommending that speed limits be lowered to improve pedestrian safety. Rob told listeners he would look into McKeown’s six-figure salary and “try to straighten things out.” The integrity commissioner later ruled that by maligning a public servant the brothers had violated council’s code of conduct, and it turned out Rob hadn’t even read the report he was so mad about.
4. May 6, 2012: “Being a practicing homosexual…”
The Ford brothers sit idly by as guest and Sun News personality David Menzies makes homophobic comments about former mayoral candidate George Smitherman in an effort to prove that the media was too focused on Rob Ford’s weight problem.
“Could you imagine if… I went to George Smitherman and I said, ‘You know what George, being a practicing homosexual and [given] the fact that you’ve been involved with all kinds of illicit drug use, how do we know you won’t engage in high-risk sex and drug use that will bring about HIV, leading to AIDS, [and] you’ll die in office?’ I would be run out of town on a rail! Oh no, we can’t say that!”” Menzies said. “I would be run out of town on a rail! Oh no, we can’t say that!”
5. September 23, 2012: Enemy Mine
The newsbreak mid-way through the program calls bullshit on the Fords’ assertion that their business mission to Chicago didn’t cost taxpayers a dime. When he returns a couple minutes later, Rob freaks out at someone having undermined his falsehoods on his very own show: he seems to believe the news spot was an “advertisement” placed there by his enemies, whom he calls “pathological liars.” Newstalk reporter James Moore – who would have been in a studio booth adjacent to the Fords’ while they blasted him – later tweets, “To be clear: I am not a ‘pathological liar,’ nor was my report an ‘advertisement.'”
6. February 10, 2013: Blackjack, not crack
In an exchange that’s rather curious in retrospect, three months before the mayor’s drug scandal breaks Rob laughs at a joke about crack cocaine. A caller accuses the board of health of hypocrisy because it supports safe injection sites but opposes a casino because of gambling addictions. As described by Torontoist’s resident RoFo show recapper David Hains, the caller says “I can’t see how one department says heroin and crack are okay, but blackjack isn’t,” and Ford “emits a stifled guffaw.”
7. April 14, 2013: Who Let the Fords Out
The Fords sing along to Who Let The Dogs Out? When Newstalk posts the show online with the music stripped, we get delightful audio of the brothers barking.
8. May 26, 2013: “Maggots”
After a week that saw the first published reports of Rob’s crack video as well as a feature on Doug’s past as an alleged Etobicoke hash dealer, the Fords took a particularly zesty run at the media. The mayor memorably called the press corps “a bunch of maggots.” He later apologized.
9. August 11, 2013: “Did I have a couple of beers? Absolutely”
Two days after appearing intoxicated at the Taste of the Danforth street festival Mayor Ford, for the first time, acknowledges being drunk in public. “Did I have a couple of beers? Absolutely I had a couple of beers,” said Rob. “But you know what? I had a good time. I think things are getting blown out of proportion.”
10. October 6, 2013: Friends for NOW
NOW and the Fords haven’t always gotten along. Doug has called the magazine “disgusting” and for our part, well there’s this and this and of course this. But a temporary truce was called when NOW publisher and NXNE co-founder Michael Hollett accompanied the Fords on an official trip to Austin, TX to promote Toronto’s music industry. This resulted in an incongruously chummy exchange when Hollett appeared on the show a few days later, with introducing him as a “great guy” and promising “Rob’s door is open” if he ever wanted to chat. While Hollett still intends to work with the administration to better promote Toronto’s music industry, the magazine hasn’t exactly eased off criticizing our beleaguered mayor.
11. October 13, 2013: RoboFords
Of all the crap that was spewed over the airwaves by the Ford brothers, the content of this episode actually led to a formal request by a city councillor to have show pulled. Rob and Doug spent a segment of the program defending a robocall campaign they launched against Councillor Paul Ainslie for voting the wrong way on the Scarborough subway. At one point Doug imitated Ainslie, who had told reporters the mayor’s office bullied him, by putting on a whiny baby voice and saying “Oh, he bullied me! He bullied me!” Ainslie wrote to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council claiming that the Fords were using the show to “malign, distort the truth, slander, attack and threaten myself and others,” and demanded that it be cancelled.
12. November 3, 2013: The Apology
On what turns out to be the final episode of the City, Rob delivers a scripted apology for unspecified “mistakes.” It’s when the mayor goes off-script that he delivers some truly memorable quotes though, admitting “I shouldn’t have got hammered down on the Danforth.” Although three days before the chief of police had confirmed the existence of the infamous crack video, he makes no mention of crack. But just two days later he shocks the city by telling reporters he used the drug.
