In case you’ve missed the news, drunk driver, homophobe, and Toronto’s current mayor Rob Ford’s history of being an embarrassment (yes there are so many incidents that the public is now keeping a spreadsheet updated) hit new heights the past two weeks! During that time:
- a video of him smoking crack cocaine was shown to journalists
- He refused to resign, saying the story was ridiculous (nobody has contested this, this whole situation is ridiculous)
- After ducking the issue for eight days and saying nothing Rob Ford finally issued a carefully-worded denial that suspiciously used the present tense a lot and never talked about the past (“I do not smoke crack cocaine” vs what he could’ve said: “I have never smoked crack cocaine, I would not do it on the job, and most certainly would not do it on video, hah hah hah what a CRAZY STORY”)
- Lots of his staff have quit or been fired, some for telling him to seek treatment
- It was revealed that one of the people seen in a photo taken at the same time as the crack recording has been murdered
- The police have been investigating and interviewing people in his office, after which his response to media was the hilarious “Everything’s fine. I have no idea what the police are investigating.” (this is now my go-to response to any “hey, how’ve you been” question, by the way)
- That’s where my protest sign above came from; this was a six point explanation so now you can find my little sign extremely hilarious
ANYWAY. This is all to say that there was a little protest today and Jenn and Emily and I went! I thought there’d be lots of funny signs but mine was one of the few jokey ones. I got to talk to reporters and said “I just want people to know there’s more to Toronto than crack cocaine” and that got published a few hours later as “there’s more to Toronto than Rob Ford”, which, I mean, is also true. But there’s ALSO more to Toronto than crack cocaine. For example, did you know we are the home of the IKEA monkey?
We look forward to your tourism dollars.