Sure, it was only a matter of time, but the Rob Ford mayoralty has finally taken its toll on Toronto’s evangelical Satanists.
Cloven Path Ministries, a mock-Satanist organization that made headlines today, has hit a snag in their mission to spread the gospel of Satan. This morning, the Star reported that one of Cloven Path’s Rob Ford-themed bus tours was interrupted on Sunday by councillor Doug Ford, who confronted Cloven Path’s Rob Ford impersonator and accused him of stalking his mother on Weston Wood Rd. in Etobicoke.
The impersonator, a 50 year-old performer named Dave McKay (AKA “Sketchy The Clown”), was chased away by Rob and Doug Ford, and escorted to Royal York Station by police. There, tour organizer “Pastor” Morgan Wilkes explained the situation, and no charges were laid.
“He was positioned at the park, with the adoring RoFo fans,” Wilkes tells us. “Next thing he knew, there was an Escalade up on him, and there was security personnel on the driver-side and RoFo on the passenger-side.”
The incident has halted the Cloven Path bus tours, which have thus far attracted tourists from as far away as Montana and Australia.
“We had to cancel tour five on Sunday, because our driver had become so apprehensive about the police presence and the nature of our ministry,” Wilkes explains. “You gotta remember: not everyone understands that we are an evangelical Satanic outreach. They associate us with yesterday’s devil, with the sacrificing of the family pet and the mutilating and the road kill. We don’t do that sort of thing! Today’s devil wants you to hold a position of high influence, wealth, and power.”
It’s not the first time the bus tour has caused a stir in the byways of Ford Nation. “One tour, when we were outside the crack-house at 15 Windsor Drive, a man came out and started screaming,” says Wilkes. “Our driver got nervous. I had to go out and diffuse it as best I could.”
For Cloven Path – and, apparently, for Lucifer himself (who appeared to Wilkes in a dream) – Rob Ford represents their modern strain of Satanism. “If you look at myself and RoFo, we do share a lot of the same virtues and agendas,” he says. “Lust, fantasy, wealth, the desire for influence and power: the kind of lifestyle we preach is the kind of lifestyle he leads. There’s a congruency, if you will.
“If it takes the mayor of this great city to get you interested in this devil,” sputters Wilkes, his voice reaching a fever pitch befitting any worthwhile soapbox preacher, “Then that’s just fine!”
But now that their driver, and vehicle, have withdrawn, Cloven Path has no way to spread the good (er, bad?) word throughout Etobicoke. Wilkes says that they need “at least a 15-seat bus” to continue the tours, and have been offered vehicles by fans (or acolytes or disciples or whatever) of their ministry. If they can manage to get it back on track, Cloven Path will also be offering (at an extra cost) a reenactment of the recent Fords/McKay “chase.”
“We’ll take you in the 1990 Volvo station wagon, the Bronco of the Ford scandal, and Sketchy The Clown our RoFo impersonator will regale you with the story, step-by-step,” he says. “It’ll be a slow-speed chase. We’ll even have an Escalade following.”
So the tour itself is now part of the tour. It’s a post-modern, down-the-rabbit-hole, head-up-its-own-ass turn worthy of the endlessly weird Ford scandal, which now includes such fringe players as a group of comedy-Satanists and someone named Sketchy The Clown.
“It’s quite incredible, isn’t it,” Wilkes notes, please. “The devil was right.”
Yes it is. Sure. Hail Satan, and God bless Ford Nation.
