Not for the first time, but never quite so intensely, I felt yesterday afternoon as if Toronto had become the backdrop (or chorus) in a modern day Greek tragedy.
I don’t say this to make light of Mayor Rob Ford’s diagnosis: he’s a very sick guy with a malignant grapefruit-sized tumour in his gut, as well as a walnut-sized satellite on his hip. He’s staring down the barrel of some intensive chemo and possibly surgery in the next few months. Plus uncertainty. Plus fear.
To put his diagnosis into the proper context, the Canadian Cancer Society says about 1,200 Canadians are diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma each year, which translates into about 100 Torontonians. Do the math and you’ll see that one person receives that devastating verdict every three days in our fair city. Suffice it to say the news is not delivered to a jam-packed press conference, the shockingly personal details of which are beamed around the world in a matter of seconds.
Unless one of these unlucky individuals is someone we work with or love, we have no access to their pain and their mental newsreel of awful images.
Yet we will know all this with Ford, for good or for ill. As has been the case for these past four years, he will transfix us — not, this time, with his horrendous personal conduct, but rather its converse — the story of his sudden illness and attempted recovery in the face of a rare and aggressive disease.
So as this news settles over us, I am consumed by complicated, unanswerable questions.
Will voters see him campaigning, perhaps having lost his hair, and how are they to feel about that sight? Will Doug dedicate his mayoral campaign to his brother, and how do voters read such a gesture? And, most importantly, how will the Ford family’s sickness-treatment narrative affect the dynamic of the race?
The rival candidates have soberly declared, as they must, that one thing doesn’t impact the other. But nothing could be further from the truth, because the Fords operate not at the mundane level of municipal politics but rather on some kind of elevated dramatic plane — an imaginative stage that was crowded, in previous epochs, by mythic heros and villains, or the starkly drawn archetypes who populated the casts of morality tales.
It is inconceivable to me that Ford’s illness won’t influence voter attitudes and possibly turn out. In the same way, his cancer battle – and Doug’s, by inference – may well serve as a kind of mute button on the harshest rhetoric of the rival candidates. Do Olivia Chow and John Tory think they can forcefully attack the Ford brothers’ record in office in the same way that they did a week ago? How do they talk critically about two men grappling with physical hardship, mortality, and loss?
This, surely, is a plot twist worthy of Shakespeare. The self-involved king who demanded a craven form of fealty from his offspring suddenly finds himself cold, alone and blind. We didn’t like him to begin with, but we now find ourselves compelled to pity him and even empathize with his futile attempt to redeem himself.
Indeed, no one should ignore the cathartic power of the redemption/recovery narrative, which, in the current scenario, will be far more emotionally compelling than Ford’s return from rehab. At his presser yesterday afternoon, I asked John Tory whether Ford, because of his illness and the harsh side-effects of chemo, should bow out of the Ward 2 race. Tory, to his credit, gave a good answer: lots of ordinary people with cancer, he said, try to live their lives as normally as possible while they get treatment. Why should it be different with Ford?
He’s right, of course. Yet if Ford does fight through the side-effects of chemo and show himself on the campaign trail – even once or twice — he will be broadcasting, as Jack Layton did after his first prostate cancer diagnosis, the aspirational idea that cancer is not a death sentence. That journey, I’m guessing, will be dramatic and public and political, and it may well obliterate everything that came before. What remains to be seen is how Doug, waiting in the wings, will deliver his lines.
9 comments
I’m reasonably certain that the elder Ford will be dragging everything down to a very manipulative and tasteless level soon enough. I’m also quite certain that the endless hunger for political power will keep both of them grasping desperately, using a terrible disease in any way they can to garner votes. Cancer carries a terrible gravitas, just the word can elicit a tear from far too many people, but keep in mind that Ford has been suffering from other tragic, often fatal diseases for some time. His so – called rehab was an affront to many people struggling with addiction issues, and he wasted no time in extracting votes from that fiasco. I don’t wish cancer on anyone, but my opinion of the Fords is unchanged.
David Rider reports today that “a source told the Star that Rob Ford’s move from the mayoral race to the Ward 2 council campaign was meant to give him something to fight for as he faces this health crisis.”
Which adds a whole new level of manipulation to this sordid tale.
Vote Ford or Robbie will die.
Perhaps it reflects the darker parts of my soul… but does no one else feel the notion of “…and God has voted.” Surely we must consider that the Fords, like Richard of Gloucester, or Julius Caesar, are not the heroes of their play, but the compelling anti-hero. They ought to heed the symbolic warnings in the script and act now, lest the deus ex machina need truly intervene in our tale.
R.
A truly disturbing prospect, Richard. You may well have called the consequences of not heeding the warnings accurately…and they may be ignored anyway because of the accuracy.
In response to Richard’s “Perhaps it reflects the darker parts of my soul… but does no one else feel the notion of “…and God has voted.”” comment. That was my initial reaction. I remember reading years ago an article be Robertson Davies in which he remarked that Toronto has a dark mystical side that is not at all apparent. His being taken out of the race is either the work of a diety or else the spirits of Toronto the Good have risen up and dealt a fatal blow.
The odd thing about cancer is the fact that the body doesnt recognize the invading malignent cells as threats so the bodies defenses do not destroy them. For that reason I have have always referred to Ford as an aggressive and silent form cancer in the body politic. That he has now been diagnosed with a silent and aggressive form of cancer is beyond strange..
Regarding Rob’s unfortunate illness, I can only say that “Karma’s a bitch”. Regarding Doug, the ass, taking over the campaign inevitably using, “my bother’s dying, vote for me” as his primary slogan (although cloaked in double-talk obviously), I can only say that “Doug’s a bastard”. Just sayin’
People don’t give Rob Ford nearly enough credit for what he has done for his community.
Done what for the community? Done what? Not one damned thing.