What Rob Ford taught me about the power of perspective

My parents occasionally drop me off at a GO station or at Kipling to make my commute downtown a little easier. One sunny September day, we were listening to CMR Tamil FM en route to the station, and a caller and the host were discussing Rob and Doug Ford. It was 2014 and municipal elections were coming up in October. A basic conversation about candidate platforms led to the caller definitively stating in Tamil, “only the Fords care about me.”

My family is originally from India and we immigrated to Canada in 2003. We have lived in Mississauga since then. As an immigrant, I learned just how little the world can care for our struggles. I grew up with friends whose parents had to choose between paying a raised property tax bill and a set of boots for their child in January. Perhaps a few community centres were able to offer more services; that also meant that my friend had wet socks from the slush that leaked in through the holes in his soles.

I started studying journalism at Ryerson in 2012. In journalism school, we are taught the techniques of telling the story and are told repeatedly to be unbiased in our work. But the importance of how the public views a story is not often mentioned let alone emphasized.

When I started my studies, Rob had been mayor for two years and he basically was on the news every other day. It seemed as though every month, he would make some sort of embarrassing error and many would call for his resignation. What more progressive and typically white collar citizens saw was a leader who kept stumbling, while more conservative and blue collar citizens saw a leader bringing the mayoral office back to everyday Torontonians. When I was in the downtown bubble surrounded by media people, everyone was expecting Olivia Chow to perform strongly, becoming mayor or the runner up. Very few of those people took the Fords seriously.

As a commuter and an immigrant, I have been blessed with the power of perspective. I am a queer, brown man from a family of varying economic statuses. I am also a journalist in a predominantly white sphere and I know that it is my duty to tell stories that matter to the public.

As a fairly liberal person, I disagree with Rob’s policies and politics. His time in office hurt a lot of Torontonians, financially and socially. When someone mentions the infamous crack video and accompanying photos, I think of the aftermath where the local Somali community was vilified as a group of drug dealers and gang members. But Rob was able to avoid bringing the label of a crack user to all white people and was primarily viewed by the public as a goofball who just made another mistake. His blatant dislike of the city’s LGBTQ communities was inexcusable. Yes, there was some serious criticism of him and calls to resign, but there was still a jovial undertone to any commentary about him.

But in spite of the above, many people viewed him as a saviour. A close family friend of mine lives in central Etobicoke. She mentioned that she was having an issue in her condo and after months of no answers from the property managers, her husband called Doug, their councillor. Within two days, she got a phone call from him and he explained to her what would happen next to get their issues resolved. She told me, “I have never had any politician actually talk to me one on one about issues that only affected me.” I asked her if she knew about his political record; she said that she knew of his politics and also disagreed with a lot of it, but she said that she would always remember that phone call. For her and many other Torontonians, Rob and Doug were the same. They were the Fords and they cared about each phone call.

When the campaigning entered the final month, it became obvious that Scarborough was a key battleground for mayoral candidates. Doug at this point was the mayoral candidate while Rob ran for his ward. There were images of Doug at a Tamil temple (kovil) where he appeared to have finished a Deepavali puja, a religious ceremony to a deity. Growing up, I knew that the kovil was a place where few non Tamils wanted to go to. I remember when I would go somewhere after kovil and people would inevitably comment on the lingering smell of incense and turmeric. When you see someone from the outside coming to the community, the community notices. The community also noticed when Doug tweeted that Tamils are a group that knows the value of hard work.

I would be wrong to say that the Fords won because of the Tamil community. I write the above to say that the Fords won because there are many communities similar to the Tamil community: the people who felt disconnected from a political sphere which they felt focused on non relatable issues like streetcar service and political jargon like civic engagement, the disengaged group of people whose attention went to long hours at low paying jobs instead of understanding the real politics of the Fords, the low income groups who needed a break on their bills. There are people who don’t pay attention to the nuances of a politician, whether intentionally or not, and will act on their emotions. Even if that meant voting for the Fords, who made many crucial mistakes and have a track record of voting against much needed services for the above groups, because they at least are more relatable than the others and spoke with basic but engaging vocabulary.

In the week leading up to the election, many in my downtown spheres said that it was a race between Tory and Chow. My friends and colleagues laughed at me when I said that I wouldn’t surprised if Doug won or came in a close second.

On election night, I worked as a ballot officer in a church in central Etobicoke. All workers were trained specifically to only explain how to vote on the ballots and to not point to any candidate’s name. After I explained this process three times to an elderly woman with a stroller, she exasperatedly pleaded with me, “I just want to vote for Rob.”

Rob taught me about the power of perspective. He was a man committed to his work and to responding to his constituents. His behaviours showed me that people will overlook a person’s wrongdoings and elect them if they feel that they represent them. As a journalist, I have been taught to tell a story to the public in an unbiased way. Rob’s reign taught me that the real story was why so many people proudly proclaimed themselves as Ford Nation. And I learned that lesson from my family and community, not the halls of j-school.