Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto, was controversial long before being smoked the crack. The explosive politician, who would have spitted racist and homophobic comments and was formerly sentenced to drunkenness, was elected mayor in 2010 for a scandalous term which led to international notoriety.
The rise and fall of Ford are the subject of a new documentary in Netflix Walnut series. Mayor of Chaos Trace the career of the right -wing populist mayor and the fall of grace, featuring investigative journalists who reported the scandal, municipal councilors and people who worked for Ford.
Ford’s rise in power
In Mayor of ChaosThe associates close to Ford say that he idolized Father Doug Ford Sr., who was also a politician, and always tried to impress him. The Junior Ford was a popular city councilor for a room in Toronto before being mayor, from 2000 to 2010.
As a politician, he was known to have distributed his business card to the voters and exhorting them to call him if something was wrong. He even found time to train football in high school in his downtime.
Elected mayor in 2010, Ford managed to pass several reforms during his first year. He forced the municipal council to repeal the tax on the registration of vehicles. Local public transport workers have been declared an essential service so that they cannot strike.
But his impetuous attitude has rejected certain municipal councilors. “It was so aggressive that many people did not want to sit near him,” said John Filion, city councilor, in the doc. Ford would tell his opponents to work with him or he would destroy them.
Smoke
In May 2013, Gawker published a video that seemed to show Ford Smoking Crack. At first, Ford denied that he had smoked crack and denied a video to smoke him cocaine crack.
The more the media reported the scandal, the more Ford tried to return people against the media. Conservative arc, Ford began to attack the Toronto starwho had the reputation of his progressive tendencies, calling the newspaper and his journalists “pathological liars”.
“Rob Ford demonizing the media of years before Donald Trump did the same thing that was extremely effective”, “Star Journalist David Rider says in the doc. Some journalists say they have received death threats for reporting on the Ford scandal.
Ford has always maintained a dedicated audience. The doc shows supporters campaigning for him to re -elect.
During a press conference in November 2013 outside his office of the Toronto town hall, Ford admitted that he had smoked crack before, but argued that he was not a drug addict. About five months later, Globe and mail Journalist Robyn Dolittle was overthrown on a Ford video with a crack hose in hand. After Globe and mail Published several fixed images of the video in April 2014, Ford, which presented itself to a re -election, went to the detoxification treatment.
In September 2014, he abandoned his candidacy to be re -elected when a tumor was discovered in his abdomen. Ford died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 46.
Mayor of Chaos Give Ford’s last word the last word to the still faithful advisers. One calls him “altruist” and another tears even when he thinks of helping Ford to sail in the scandal. His former chief of staff Mark Towhey closes the 49-minute doc, arguing: “We all have a robot, somewhere in our life. And I think that in the long term, history thinks of him as a man who has had a disease, who, despite this, has accomplished things that had never been accomplished before. And … bad things, yes, it speaks of itself. “
