My ex is riding a bike tomorrow all the way to Niagara Falls.

She won’t be alone.  Lots of folks are doing likewise, for the Princess Margaret Ride to Conquer Cancer.

Suzanne’s personal page, where you can read her story and contribute, is here.  She’s been training for months, and she – and all of the other participants – deserve support and admiration. Cancer took my Dad eight years, 11 months and 357 days ago, and I strongly support this event.  You should, too.

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A must-read:

Ontario once ran 16 of these institutions. All are closed now. But shutting the doors doesn’t undo the damage provincial employees did to thousands of cognitively disabled youngsters.

The province has silenced them for half a century. But their day of reckoning will come — no matter how many legal roadblocks the government erects.

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Sure hope Carleton’s History Department, or any students, don’t see this.

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From Gawker. A certain chief magistrate won’t be sleeping well, tonight:

We have also learned that the video of Ford smoking crack cocaine was recorded inside that home on the same night the photo was taken…

A source who knows both Basso and Ford tells Gawker that the men are longtime friends, and that Ford has been a frequent visitor to 15 Windsor over the years. According to this source, the video of Ford smoking crack was recorded there at some point six to eight months ago during one of Ford’s “binges.” “He’s been doing it for years,” the source said of Ford’s trip to the house. “They go down in the basement and party.” The source said he would frequently hear Fabio complain, after Ford’s visits, “Rob and my sister kept me up all night.”

On the night the video was recorded, the source said, Basso’s mother was out of town. Ford came over, and “some kids from the neighborhood”—by which the source meant the nearby housing complex at 320 Dixon Rd. where Ford would later tell his staff he believed the video was being stored—were called over to supply the group with crack. At one point, the group—which included Anthony Smith and Muhammad Khattak, who were later shot in March outside a Toronto nightclub—asked Ford for a picture. (I should note here that one of our sources on this story has repeatedly insisted that Smith was not personally involved in the drug trade.)

When Fabio objected to a photograph being taken inside his home, someone suggested they go outside. “Ford ran outside like a schoolgirl to have that picture taken,” the source, who was not present but heard about the evening’s events later, told Gawker.

Ford and the boys at 15 Windsor Road, the night the video was shot.

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Hear, hear!

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All in a day’s work.

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From Liberal.ca:

Please join us for a lively and enlightening evening with guest speaker Warren Kinsella who will explore the social and economic implications of the disturbing trend toward income inequality in Canada. Warren Kinsella is a lawyer with a broad range of experience as a political consultant. From 1990 to 1993, Warren held the position of Special Assistant to the Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. In 2003, 2007, and 2011 he was Chairman of the War Room in the successful Ontario Liberal Party election campaigns; federally, he managed the Liberal Party of Canada’s War Rooms in 1993 and 2000. He is an award-winning author and journalist. Warren has been a columnist for various newspapers. He currently writes for the Hill Times and the Sun chain. His seventh book, Fight the Right, was published this year. Cost: $10 paid via Liberal.ca or please email event host to RSVP and arrange payment by cash or cheque.

Contact:
chaluza@sympatico.ca

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…here’s a video about Rob Ford – and, er, crack cocaine – right here!

We’re living in a “world-class city,”
but lately it seems kind of icky
Some days it’s downright silly
Being governed by hillbillies!

We’ve got a mayor on crack?
We wanna give him the sack
He makes us all wanna yak
We’ve got a mayor on crack?

This mayor steals taxpayer bucks
That mayor likes to throw muck
We’ve got the worst situation:
We’re governed by the Ford Nation!

Representatives of big record companies, take note: Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk trio, SFH, are giving the proceeds from their newest tune and video, ‘Mayor On Crack?’ to to a Canadian addiction-counselling facility. Download it now, download it often, right here! We’re on iTunes, even!

(Oh, and if you want to offer us a big contract so we can quit our day jobs, which we do, please contact our manager, David MacMillan, at Deadbolt Music.)

See? Crack video, not gone!

UPDATE: the real video, meanwhile – the one over which Rob Ford could sue for big bucks, but hasn’t – is still out there, Gawker’s grumblings notwithstanding.

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“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe,” said a French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. “The marketing immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”

Baudrillard’s works influenced The Matrix movie series, of all things, but we shouldn’t hold that against him.

Surveying the Canadian political landscape this spring, we know he’s at least partly right. He’s insightful in the first part of his observation (that is, scandal is no longer fatal to one’s career), but arguably wide of the mark in the second (that is, that governments possess the means to whitewash the popular consciousness).

There are three main reasons for this: One, we have a national memory in this country of about seven minutes. Two, we in the media — and, therefore, the opposition parties — flit from controversy to boondoggle like houseflies, and we rarely linger on any one overmuch. Three, the public have seen allegations of scandal made too many times to get upset anymore. Until they see someone led away to prison in handcuffs, they shrug.

Scandals are survivable, and Rob Ford and Stephen Harper clearly know this. At the moment, both Conservatives should theoretically be fighting for their political lives: Ford, with a tale in which it is alleged he used crack cocaine sometime in the past, and which he has not denied, and Harper, with a Senate expense scandal that has claimed the Prime Micromanager’s chief of staff, but about which he insists with a straight face he knew nothing.

Nobody, not even sensible Conservatives, doesn’t doubt either politician’s claims. Meanwhile, the controversies haven’t abated — both are now entering week three of front-page media coverage, a rare event.

But the Senate and crack cocaine scandals haven’t really altered many popular opinions. Polls (such as they are these days) tell us that Ford’s personal popularity remains unchanged amongst Torontonians. And Harper will remain prime minister for two more years, and he does not seem to be losing any sleep worrying about l’affaire Duffy.

Another example, thrown out almost as an afterthought in the midst of the sordid, seamy Ford mess. In a huge Globe and Mail investigation into the Ford family’s alleged involvements with drugs — the story claimed that Ford’s councillor brother, Doug, was once a dealer, and Ford has not sued them for it — there was a new scandal: A member of the Ford family associated with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi Heritage Front.

Said the Globe: “(Kathy Ford’s) friends included Gary MacFarlane, a founding member of the short-lived Canadian chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the late Wolfgang Droege, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist in Canadian history …”

The report went on to state that “Kathy Ford was close to the movement,” although she was “hardly a committed soldier in the race war,” and that racist leaders even hung out in the Ford family home, although the newspaper’s source, a former Klansman, couldn’t recall meeting the brothers.

Those are extraordinary allegations. The response? Nothing. That part of the Globe’s story passed with barely a mention.

It is all very peculiar, indeed. Unless you accept Jean Baudrillard’s point of view, that is, and agree that scandal — in and of itself — is no longer enough to end political careers anymore. And that, of course, says quite a bit more about we voters than it says about the politicians.

It isn’t complimentary.

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The long wait is over, SFH Nation! Here it is, folks – Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk trio, SFH, offer up their newest tune and video: ‘Mayor On Crack?’

Proceeds from sale of this unstoppable chart-topper will go to a Canadian addiction-counselling facility. Download it now, download it often, right here! We’re on iTunes, even!

Oh, and for the hundreds of press inquiries that will doubtlessly result, please contact our manager, David MacMillan, at Deadbolt Music. He likes the Strolling Bones, but we still let him hang out with us.

Here it is! Suck this, RoFo!

We’re living in a “world-class city,”
but lately it seems kind of icky
Some days it’s downright silly
Being governed by hillbillies!

We’ve got a mayor on crack?
We wanna give him the sack
He makes us all wanna yak
We’ve got a mayor on crack?

This mayor steals taxpayer bucks
That mayor likes to throw muck
We’ve got the worst situation:
We’re governed by the Ford Nation!

Comments (17)