Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story Read online

I punched out a few cryptic text messages to some police contacts who had been helpful on my stories about domestic calls to the police from the Ford home. No one had heard about the mayor being in trouble. I logged into Twitter. It didn’t take long to find photos from Saturday night of Ford looking woozy in a bright-green tie, linked arm in arm with random groups of people on the street. In one, Ford was standing in front of a coffee shop that I knew was just around the corner from the Bier Markt. I also realized a weekly paper called The Grid (which is owned by the same company as the Star) was already on the story. Earlier that day they’d published their regular roundup of Ford sightings over the last seven days. The writer, Jonathan Goldsbie, put it together by trawling social media. Apparently, Ford had arrived at the Bier Markt with a group around midnight. They were moved to a private room. “According to a server,” wrote Goldsbie, “the group looked like they had already been somewhere earlier, and said they’d wanted to get out and cut loose for the night.”

  Goldsbie had obviously been poking around, which accounted for the “lockdown” our tipster had warned us about. I wanted a bit more information before heading to the restaurant myself. People are always more likely to talk when they think they’re confirming something you already know rather than digging for dirt you’re not sure is there.

  The next afternoon, I walked over to the Bier Markt for lunch and took a seat near the window at a small table draped in white linens. I was one of about a dozen people in the place— not an ideal backdrop for a sensitive conversation.

  The waitress came by to take my order.

  “Um, I’ll have the cheese fondue please.”

  “Great,” she said, starting to turn away.

  “Oh, hey.” I scrunched up my nose and whispered, “So, like, what’s all this stuff on Twitter about the mayor? Was he really here on the weekend?”

  The muscles in her face tightened. “Sorry, I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  I ate my lunch and left. I would need to come back at night when it was crowded. I texted a friend of mine named Will. “Hey. What are you doing Thursday? Think you could sit with me at the Bier Markt for a few hours while I work? The Star will buy drinks.” He was in.

  We grabbed a bar table just off the dance floor. Every twenty minutes, I’d wander around looking for a staff member who was alone and didn’t seem to be management. No one was very chatty, but bit by bit, pieces started to come together. Ford had arrived “out of it.” He was put in the back, away from everyone, and he stayed there for less than an hour. Eventually, he was urged to leave. On his way out, he “stormed the dance floor,” and there was supposedly security footage of this. As for what happened in the private room, only one person had seen it.

  Will and I went back Friday night and then Saturday. By then I knew I was looking for an olive-skinned bus boy. But I could feel my window was closing. The Bier Markt was big, but my questions were starting to draw attention. I could see bartenders gesturing my way and whispering. Then I saw a young Spanish-looking guy in a black apron walk by with a handful of dirty dishes. Will and I looked at each other. I got up and followed him to the kitchen, where he briefly disappeared. In seconds, he flew back into the busy club carrying steaming plates of something. He was heading to the far side of the room, where a wall divided tables from the nosy bartenders. Now was my chance.

  “Hey,” I said, loud enough that he could hear me over the booming music. “Look, I’ll be quick. I’m trying to find the guy who walked in on Rob Ford supposedly snorting coke.”

  He smirked and half chuckled. “Yeah, that was me.”

  “I thought it might be,” I said. “I’m Robyn from the Star. Can we talk?”

  His name was Leo Navarro, and he would meet me at 2 A.M. after his shift. I headed back to my table, downed the rest of my beer, and emailed Graham Parley: “Found him.”

  I WAS WAITING on the sidewalk a bit down the street when Navarro came outside. We started to walk west and eventually hopped in a cab. I’d promised to drive him home. Navarro didn’t mind if I taped the conversation, but he asked me to keep his name out of it. He was a college student and he needed this job. The restaurant would definitely fire him if they thought he was talking. I agreed to keep his identity confidential until he instructed otherwise.

  According to Navarro, Ford and an entourage showed up around 11:30 P.M. on March 17 and were taken to the private room in back, the Merchant Room, which is curtained off. One of the club’s security guards was outside the entrance. Someone else was serving the room. Navarro was just there to deliver a plate of poutine. As he pulled back the red curtain, he saw the mayor with “some really young girl right beside him.” Ford leaned towards her and “snorted something off the girl’s hand.” Then “he kinda just wiped his nose right after,” jerking his head up. Then the woman curled forward, sniffed, and threw her head back. He never saw any powder. There weren’t any lines on the table. Ford didn’t say anything or even acknowledge him. When the mayor had arrived at the club, “he was already hammered. So, I mean, he really had googly eyes, and he wasn’t paying attention.”

  Navarro left the room and tried to process what had happened. He didn’t say anything to anyone for at least ten minutes. He finally had to get some air out back. That’s when he told Jenna and then a bartender about what he’d seen. He never told a manager, and he hadn’t heard about the mayor being asked to leave. He did show me a business card belonging to one of Ford’s young aides, Brooks Barnett.

  “There’s one other thing I should probably tell you, in the interest of full disclosure,” Navarro said. “I supported Smitherman in the election.”

  A FEW DAYS AFTER I tracked down Navarro, a DJ called in to the Dean Blundell Show on 102.1 The Edge, claiming he had been working at the Bier Markt when the mayor showed up. He told the radio host his booth had been set up beside the private room where Ford, two assistants, a few buddies, and two women around the age of thirty were partying. “I’m trying to do my thing, and then I hear all this noise in the background,” the DJ said. Ford was “slamming the table, saying that he’s this, he’s that.” He was “bickering, arguing, just loud-mouthing.” He told Blundell that the mayor was “starting fights with his buddies and acting like an idiot.”

  When I contacted the DJ’s entertainment company, Freshstone, the owner, Rob Stone, mistook me for someone from the Bier Markt’s head office. “I already gave his number to someone this morning,” he said. When I identified myself as a reporter, Stone would not put me in touch with the DJ and made a note of saying he wasn’t a regular staff member.

  The Bier Markt operating partner, Robert Medal, denied everything in an email to me. “On March 17 [2012], Mr. Ford was an exemplary guest enjoying a fun night out at the Bier Markt. At no time was Mr. Ford or any member of his group ever asked to leave the premises. When he and his group chose to leave the restaurant, our staff let them exit via a private dining area for their convenience. I did want to further clarify one point. Guests at the Bier Markt who do not adhere to the law or requirements laid out by AGCO’s [the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario’s] Smart Serve program are promptly exited from the restaurant.”

  Staff had been warned not to talk to media, and in fact Navarro was punished for even mentioning what he’d seen to other staff members. The restaurant had been in trouble a few times with the AGCO.

  I moved on to my contacts within the mayor’s circle. The more pieces I uncovered, the stranger the story became.

  Rob Ford didn’t have a typical political staff. Most of his hires were chosen for their loyalty rather than political experience. You could count his senior aides on one hand. The majority of the roster was dominated by “kids,” as they were called in the office, fresh out of university. They were his “special assistants.” Some focused on the mayor’s football teams. Others answered email and returned constituents’ calls. The veteran aides sometimes got to help with policy files. The one thing everyone had to do was take turns being Ford�
�s “body man.”

  The night of St. Patrick’s Day, it was Brooks Barnett’s turn. He’d gotten a call to go to City Hall around 7 P.M. When he arrived, the mayor was crouching like a football player and sprinting around his office. A scantily clad woman was there whom Barnett didn’t recognize, as well as a friend of the mayor’s. Ford was “talking quickly,” “slurring,” and seemed generally “out of it.” Barnett texted a senior staffer for advice. Earl Provost, who managed councillor relations, rushed to City Hall. The mayor said he “wanted to party.”

  I heard they headed to the Bier Markt after that, and once they got kicked out they returned to City Hall. That was when the mayor flew into a rage, pushing Brooks Barnett hard enough that he lost his footing. There was also some suggestion that Ford had driven drunk or high later on. One former staffer told me Ford had almost run Earl Provost over with his car.

  It was more than a year before I learned the full details through police documents and additional interviews. It turned out it wasn’t just Provost and Barnett there that night. Two other staffers, Olivia Gondek and Isaac Ransom, had also been called in. When Ford decided he wanted to head to a bar, the group got into two cabs and made the short drive to the Bier Markt. En route, the mayor started heckling the cab driver, calling him a “Paki” and mocking his accent. After it became clear the restaurant staff was ready for the mayor to leave, the group returned to City Hall. That’s when things really deteriorated. Ford was wild, aggressive, and talking irrationally. One staff member thought they saw the mayor pop an OxyContin pill. When he announced he wanted to start phoning constituents back, staff members unplugged his phone. Confused and frustrated, Ford turned to Barnett and told him, “I hate you!” The mayor shoved Barnett, who fell onto an office couch. “Fuck this,” Barnett said, and walked out.

  At 2:30 A.M., Ford stumbled down to the City Hall security desk carrying a half-empty bottle of St-Rémy French brandy. He was sweating and slurring his words. He told two guards that he wanted to leave but his car had been stolen. Ford asked one of the men, Davood Mohammadi, to call the police.

  “I reminded the mayor that he did not drive to City Hall and that his car was safe and sound at his place,” Mohammadi wrote in an incident report after the fact. (The city refused to release this report until November 2013, denying a freedom-of-information request filed by the Star.)

  Things were out of hand. Ford continued to wander around, yelling and swearing. Staffer Isaac Ransom overheard the mayor tell a female security guard he was “going to eat her box.” He also claimed to have heard Ford tell his colleague Olivia Gondek, “I’m going to eat you out” and “I banged your pussy.” (Gondek denies this.) Eventually, Provost got the mayor into a cab and headed for Etobicoke, but once they pulled into his driveway, Ford announced he wanted to go out again. He got into his own car. Provost jumped out of the cab to try to block the driveway. The mayor’s car nearly hit the cab as it peeled out of the driveway and disappeared. No one heard from him for a full day.

  His most senior staff huddled the next morning for a meeting. They were sure it was over. But reporters were never able to nail down the story. Navarro hadn’t seen any powder. I’d confirmed that Ford was drunk at the Bier Markt and that he’d been walked out by security, but that wasn’t quite enough for a story. It was St. Patrick’s Day, after all. As for the stuff about City Hall, which would have been in the public interest, the details were still sketchy for me. At the time, I had only two sources, and neither had seen it with their own eyes. I had more work to do.

  Back at City Hall, Ford apologized to Barnett. The young aide, fresh out of university with aspirations for a future in politics, reluctantly accepted. (In November 2013, when many of these details first surfaced publicly through police documents, Ford threatened to sue former staff members as well as Navarro from the Bier Markt for what they had told police about that night. As of year’s end he hadn’t followed through on the threat.)

  One former staff member who was working in the office at the time told me that the St. Patrick’s Day incident was a turning point. From then on, the mayor became more and more erratic.

  “We knew he drank,” said one former staffer, “but this was the first time we heard about drugs.”

  The more I dug, the more obvious it was that something bigger was happening. According to three former staff members and a close confidant, senior staff had been trying to get Ford into rehab for more than a year. They believed his drinking was affecting his job. He was arriving late at the office and sometimes not at all. More and more, he couldn’t be relied upon to show up at events. More and more, he wasn’t answering his cell phone. With the mayor missing in action, his administration had lost control.

  While many councillors identify with a political party, the municipal system is independent. Votes are won on an individual basis. A personal call from the mayor can help sway a fence-sitter. Those conversations weren’t happening at City Hall. A group of centrist councillors had seized power. At one point, there was talk among the mayor’s staffers about organizing a fake vacation during which he would go to a treatment centre. Ford refused. As a last resort, they tried to hook him up with a prominent person in the city who had also struggled with addiction, just to talk. Ford refused.

  “That’s the story you should be looking into,” a high-ranking former staffer told me at the time. “He’s going to die otherwise.”

  MY FOCUS SHIFTED AWAY from the Bier Markt incident to the drinking and rehab. Photos of the mayor buying mickeys of vodka—almost always the cheap Russian Prince brand—had been popping up on Twitter for weeks. I’d been taking screenshots and filing them away in a just-in-case folder. Most of the sightings ended up in Goldsbie’s weekly Grid roundup. Now I started reaching out to these Twitter paparazzi for more details.

  As the story got further along, the head of the Star’s investigative unit, Kevin Donovan, got involved. He was soon able to deliver a key source to further confirm that the mayor’s staff was hoping to get him into a rehabilitation program.

  The story was coming together. We were confident that the mayor had a drinking problem and that his staff wanted him to get help. The next part was proving the public interest. Rob Ford was not the first political leader to struggle with alcohol. That private battle becomes public news only after it begins to impact the official’s job. This clearly seemed to be the case for the mayor. With the Ford administration refusing to release the mayor’s daily schedule, the Star and other organizations were obtaining them through freedom-of-information requests. Analyzing the latest batch against the same period a year before clearly showed that Ford’s workload had been cut in half. I began compiling a list of events where the mayor was a no-show. A VIA Rail speaking engagement; a meeting with Calgary’s Mayor Naheed Nenshi; official greetings of foreign dignitaries. Many of Toronto’s most influential city-builders hadn’t met the mayor in more than a year: United Way Toronto CEO Susan McIsaac; Board of Trade president, Carol Wilding; CivicAction’s CEO, Mitzie Hunter; the list went on. His own committee chairs acknowledged they hadn’t met with Ford in months. Toronto’s city manager was dealing with the chief of staff, Amir Remtulla, not the mayor. The only time Ford could be 100 percent relied upon to show up was at a monthly council meeting, an executive committee meeting, and every football practice and game.

  I spoke with a dozen prominent, non-partisan civic leaders in Toronto who expressed serious concern about the mayor’s truancy. Rob Ford was the head of Canada’s sixth-largest government. He oversaw an annual operating budget of nine billion dollars, and he was the CEO to fifty thousand city employees. When he opened his mouth, he spoke for 2.8 million people. (And it’s worth noting that every year, taxpayers write the mayor of Toronto a cheque for $170,000 as compensation for his work.) Ford’s absences troubled many.

  By the end of April 2012, Donovan and I had formally looped in the mayor’s office about our investigation, giving them adequate time to respond. We spoke to staff in person, l
eft phone messages, sent texts and private notes on Twitter. A detailed email with all the allegations went out to senior staff as well as the mayor. A few days later, I bumped into Ford’s chief of staff near the security desk in the rotunda.

  “When’s it coming?” Remtulla asked.

  “Soon, I think. Maybe in a few days.”

  He simply nodded.

  The Star’s in-house lawyer had been through a draft story. The mayor’s office had declined to comment. On May 2, Donovan and I met with the Star’s senior editors, the lawyer, and the publisher, John Cruickshank, in the paper’s fifth-floor boardroom overlooking Lake Ontario. I had to give a presentation detailing everything I knew and how I knew it. I used ten four-foot-long sheets of white paper and a pack of Magic Markers to outline my case. I broke down each source, how they knew what they knew, how it fit into the larger narrative, and then taped these sheets around the walls. I was grilled about each one. I left work that night on edge but excited. This had been my life for a month, and now we were close to publishing. A friend took me out to dinner in the east end of Toronto.

  A little after 9 P.M. my cell phone rang. It was Daniel Dale calling from a Star land line. Daniel and I had been interns together, and he had moved to our City Hall bureau a year and a half earlier. He was, and is, one of my best friends.

  “Hey, D,” I said. “What are you doing at work so late?”

  “Robyn!” His voice was shaking. “I can’t— You will not believe what just happened. I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry.”

  ONCE I’D HEARD DALE OUT, I rushed in to the Star. By now, I was shaking too. I found Dale in the newsroom. There was no colour in his face. Everyone was being very quiet. He spotted me and got up from his desk. We walked around a corner.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” he said, but he didn’t look okay.

  “I just don’t get it. What happened?” I asked. “Did you call the police?”