City councillor’s book renders Rob Ford a little less misunderstood

Most of what Mayor Rob Ford did in office, the misbehaviour that made him the most infamous politician on Earth, is now known. So too, by and large, is the “how” of things — the ways in which he did it.

The screaming absence in the Ford story — at least to Toronto councillor John Filion — was always the why of it all.

Why is it the Ford family set a new gold standard in dysfunction? Why did Rob Ford end up so profoundly damaged? Why, in the face of his unfitness for office, do supporters devotedly back him and the Ford family?

In his new book The Only Average Guy, Filion has brought keen observation, high emotional intelligence and — given the widespread fear the Fords still evoke — a commendable frankness to addressing those questions.

From the time Ford arrived at city hall as a councillor in 2000, “I recognized in him a shy, awkward kid who seemed painfully alone,” Filion wrote.

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He describes an unloved child, turned unhappy man, placed in the untenable position of occupying an office far beyond his abilities.

Ford was without self-awareness, without emotional tools, without self-esteem, without friends worthy of the name, “struggling to do the best he could,” Filion said.

“I wondered about the childhood that had produced such a troubled adult.”

What the author found was a family presided over by a bullying father who withheld the recognition children so crave; older siblings mired in violence, drug abuse, criminality; mutual jealousy in a family where there was never enough love to go round; and a well-founded mistrust of each other in a world of rage and unpredictability.

The success of Filion’s book lies in the fact it will please neither those who regard Rob Ford with unvarnished embarrassment, nor those who consider him messiah of the common folk.

Such caricatures actually say more about the people who believe in them than they do the man, Filion said in an interview. Life and people are more complicated.

“Nobody tries to be friends with this guy, nobody tries to understand him.”

Filion likes Ford, but does not sugarcoat his judgments. “It became clear as I went along that he was just trying to be his dad, it was the only thing he knew.”

Filion was aided significantly in the book by the observations of Ford’s former campaign manager Nick Kouvalis — who helped him see Ford wasn’t elected in spite of his extreme flaws; it was the extreme flaws that helped him get elected — and by former policy adviser Sheila Paxton, who saw a lot but who nobody at city hall bothered talking to.

To those who view the former mayor with contempt, Filion puts a proposition. If it was horrible to endure him as mayor, “imagine being Rob Ford.”

Most of life seemed “incomprehensible to him,” he said. “As mayor of Toronto, he constantly had to cover up an inability to understand much of what was happening around him.”

Filion saw Ford this week to pay off a football bet. Being clean and sober has helped the former mayor, he said.

“He was just this really nice, kind-hearted, it sounds crazy but almost this gentle person.

“He knows that he maybe has a second chance to have a healthy relationship with his wife and kids . . . He doesn’t want to be a screw-up.”

Ford told Filion, however, he doesn’t plan to read the book.

Five things we learned from Filion’s book: From hurtin’ to humour

1. Rob Ford’s father, the great patriarch, did not attend his victory parties in 2000 and 2003. He did not canvass for his son. Acccording to what Filion learned, Doug Sr. didn’t even vote for his youngest child, and told him that. “How hurtful must that have been?”

2. In 2012, at a meeting in matriarch Diane Ford’s home, Nick Kouvalis told the family what he’d heard about Rob’s drinking and drug use, drunk driving, his unsavoury choice of friends. “I don’t believe it,” Diane said. Had the Fords heeded the warning and put Rob’s well-being first, “I don’t think he would have defied his family,” Filion said.

3. The infamous “enough to eat at home” line was not spontaneous. Ford’s wife Renata told Ford staffer Sheila Paxton she and Ford talked about it the night before. “He was trying to make a joke.” Renata said. The Fords thought it was funny, talked about tossing it out. “With no idea how that would go over,” Filion said.

4. At Christmas, Rob Ford would re-gift items he’d been given as mayor, placing them all on a table and inviting staff to pick something. Later, he handed out $50 bills, then cheques in that amount. He almost never praised staff or said thanks. Just as his father didn’t.

5. The day city council reduced Ford to a figurehead, he told his staff: “The bastards got me.” Then he put his head on the table and cried. “Great, heaving sobs,” Filion writes. “It was the only sound in the room for what seemed an unbearably long time.” As Sheila Paxton explained it: “Nobody else cried.”