.
By Sean Delaney.
Man of the people.
It may be an over used cliché in politics, but like most clichés, there is a reason.
It’s what every politician genuinely strives for and there is one politician, recently lost and so dramatically remembered, that will carry the earned label in his legacy.
Robert Bruce Ford was born in Etobicoke on May 28, 1969.
Toronto said a too early goodbye to him on March 22 of this year. He was 46 years old.
First elected Mayor in 2010, Rob Ford built a legacy that could have spanned 100 years, and like he lived his life, packed it all into a whirlwind existence that will not soon be forgotten.
Ford was the youngest of four children, Doug, Kathy and Randy coming before him. His parents were Ruth Diane (nee Campbell) and Douglas Bruce. His father founded the Toronto based Deco Labels and Tags specializing in pressure-sensitive labels for plastic-wrapped grocery products.
With an estimated $100 million in annual sales, the business gave Ford a privileged existence, but it was one that never seemed to, as they say, go to his head.
Ford was grounded, genuine and always credited with being a man of the people. He used a successful political career to fight for the taxpayer, and much of his free time to work with neighbourhood children and young men in a successful high school football coaching career.
Ford was educated at Carleton Univeristy and was a member of the football team, even though he didn’t get into any games.
He studied political science and carried his passion for and knowledge of football throughout his life.
He coached at Newtonbrook Secondary School in 2001 before beginning a famed career at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School. His run at Don Bosco would last from 2001 to 2013.
Among his accomplishments on the field, Ford was credited with a $20,000 donation to equip the Don Bosco team as well as starting a foundation to fund teams at other schools struggling to field football teams.
In the year 2000, Ford married Renata Brejniak, a high school sweetheart. Ford and Brejniak had daughter Stephanie, and son Doug, and lived in Etobicoke
His political career began in 2000 when he was elected to serve ward 2 (Etobicoke North) as councillor. While criticized late in his career for personal scandal, Ford proved his mettle early in his career. During the 2001 budget, when the city was facing hundreds of millions of dollars in short falls due to provincial downloading, he proposed cuts to councilors budgets, including office and travel budgets, limousine usage and club memberships.
He called the use of expenses self promotion, and famously charged $10 in annual expenses in his first year, and four dollars in expenses in his second, choosing instead to pay his costs from his own salary.
In 2010, he ran for Mayor on a campaign dedicated to cutting the “gravy train.”
He painted himself the every man and the people of Toronto soaked it up, handing him 47 per cent of the vote.
On September 2014, his personal health would get in the way of his career however. Prepared to defend his seat, and contest the scandal that plagued him, Ford was diagnosed with a rare cancer, pleomorphic liposarcoma, and withdrew his name from the campaign. He instead ran for his old council seat and won that easily.
Chemo and radiation therapy would follow, and on May 11, 2015, Ford announced he would endure a complex surgery to remove the tumour. He would take four months off, he said, and then return to the work that he loved. At a Ford family community barbecue later that year, Ford announced he was tumour free and progressing well.
On October 28, 2015 however, he addressed the people and confirmed a new tumour was growing.
The next day, his brother Doug confirmed the tumour was cancerous and consistent with liposarcoma based on a CT scan.
On March 17 of this year, Ford was said to be surrounded by family and friends, and fighting.
He would lose his fight five days later.
Mayor, coach, father and above all, human being, Ford was branded an every man because he was genuinely a man who loved the people he served.
And he passed among them, very much one of them. In hospital, surrounded by the family and friends, fighting a disease that takes many of us.
Whatever they are, the majority of goals in life involve leaving a legacy the people around you, that love and cherish you, will remember.
Robert Bruce Ford, in just 46 short years, achieved all of that, and a little bit more.
Typical of exactly the man he was.