He was a joke. And then he won. He was a trainwreck. But it didn’t matter. He was a drug user and an alcoholic. But a lot of people loved him anyway. And most of all, Rob Ford was a sign of things to come—in politics, in the media and around the world. Welcome to the Gravy Train.

Trailer: He was a joke. And then he won. He was a trainwreck. But it didn’t matter. He was a drug user and an alcoholic. But a lot of people loved him anyway. And most of all, Rob Ford was a sign of things to come—in politics, in the media and around the world. Welcome […]

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This is the story of how our subject goes from the outskirts of the city to a seat in the building at the heart of its power. Before he was the Mayor of Toronto, and before all the insanity that came in the years following that, Rob Ford was just a young man working at the family business in the suburbs, looking for a spark. An unlikely business request led Rob and his family into politics, and Toronto hasn’t been the same since.

Rob Ford’s colleagues laughed off his campaign for mayor. They shouldn’t have. They assumed the numerous scandals he’d already suffered through, and the fresh ones that would dominate his campaign, would crush his chances. They shouldn’t have. They ran traditional campaigns and counted on Torontonians to make a relatively traditional choice, the kind they’d always made. They really, really shouldn’t have.

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As Rob Ford began his term as mayor by ending taxes and cancelling transit plans, his colleagues on city council and the reporters who covered them were starting to gossip. As his first weeks turned to months, Ford was around less and less, and people were starting to wonder: What was going on with the mayor? And then, two high-profile nights out added fuel to that fire…

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After months of absences and whispers and rumours, all of Mayor Rob Ford’s private life started to go public. It began with one story, which led to more, and more. The mayor’s response was denial—and to paint the media as the enemy and attack them by name. There’s a reason this strategy has become so popular. It works.

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The whole world was talking about whether or not Toronto’s mayor smoked crack. You might think that the mayor would change his behaviour following the headlines about his drug use. But he didn’t. We know this because the police were watching him with a secret investigation named Project Brazen II.

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Mayor Rob Ford publicly admitted to smoking crack “in one of my drunken stupors” on Nov. 5, 2013. And then all hell broke loose.

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