Drugs, booze, ranting tirades captured on film – and that’s just the information contained on the jacket of a new book looking at the personal and professional life of Toronto’s top politico.
“Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story,” written by Toronto Star reporter Robyn Doolittle, hit the shelves Monday.
“I think it’s incredibly appropriate for the last eight months in this city,” Doolittle told CP24’s Stephen LeDrew in an interview Monday regarding the book’s title. “There is no one like Rob Ford. I mean, if you were writing this as a fictional story, I think your editor would say, ‘no, you have to pull that back.’”
The new 300-plus page book looks to go behind the scenes to examine the stories behind the headlines that have become fodder for late-night television monologues for the last several months.
Doolittle, who has covered municipal politics for the paper since 2010, was one of three journalists to view the notorious video which reportedly shows Ford smoking crack cocaine in May 2013.
While the book examines the media frenzy and police investigations at the time of the first whispers of the video’s existence, it also goes back further to look at Ford’s earlier years.
The purpose behind the book is two-pronged, Doolittle said. First, to look at the circumstances that led to what many saw as Ford’s unlikely election in 2010, and secondly to look at who Ford is as a person separate from politics.
“When I started looking at that second question, his family just kept coming up over and over again,” Doolittle explained.
“In the book I document cases where this whole issue of lying, and truth, and mistrust, and hiding dirty laundry – and it’s a theme that’s been through his life,” she said. “It’s something that’s engrained in him.”
Deciding what would be included and what should be omitted was not an easy process, Doolittle said.
“I really struggled with what to include, because these are not public officials.” Doolittle explained with regards to members of Ford’s family. “They didn’t ask to be in the spotlight. Especially with (Ford’s wife) Renata.”
While much of the book’s material will be familiar to those who have followed the Ford story over the last several months, the book does offer some new insights, including a claim that Ford’s wife Renata had sought drug counselling for her husband as early as 2010.
“I only included details that I thought were really important to understanding the mayor, and I think it is incredibly important to know that the mayor’s wife had a conversation with someone, shortly after he was elected, saying ‘he’s going to ruin his whole life, he’s a public official, he needs to get off drugs,’” Doolittle said.
Doolittle said she decided to write the book to get beyond the “punch line” that the story has made of the city, and help expose what she feels is the true severity of the mayor and his behaviour.
“This is not just a man with a substance abuse issue. It matters that the mayor of Toronto is having some sort of friendship with criminals and that he’s still hanging out with (accused drug dealer) Sandro Lisi and these types of people. There (are) huge implications to this, and I think that’s something that needs to be out there.”
Ford family not consulted for book: Doug Ford
One member of the Ford family said the book is just the latest in an ongoing attack against his family.
“It’s just another example of how Robyn Doolittle and the Toronto Star want to attack our family,” Coun. Doug Ford said at city hall Monday.
Ford, who admitted he hadn’t seen the book yet, said that no members of his family were consulted by Doolittle.
“Everything’s anonymous,” he described of sources cited in the book. “I could put a book together that’s anonymous sources about Robyn Doolittle and all the shenanigans at the Toronto Star, but we have a job to do, and that’s to save the taxpayers money.”
