Rob Ford's Toronto

[Team Me]

" Much of Toronto is inhabited by people who are deeply annoyed by the fact that there are other people around them"

wow, that is probably the best description of Toronto I have ever heard

There was an old quote from Northrop Frye in a NY Times opinion article today: "Toronto is a great place to mind your own business." which is kind of paraphrasing this.

 

[dforthandbview]

Ford was a no-show tonight at Hard Rock Cafe.

 

[manhandler]

I have been following this and think yours is the most plausible... but there's still one glaring whole: if it does involve sex with a minor, most would refuse to watch it and those who had wouldn't admit as it adds illegality on top of the element of disgust.

Agreed. That's why I wondered about all the hyperbole people had been using.

 

[themarc]

I have been following this and think yours is the most plausible... but there's still one glaring whole: if it does involve sex with a minor, most would refuse to watch it and those who had wouldn't admit as it adds illegality on top of the element of disgust.

Agreed - but 1) Some might not believe it and want to see it and 2) Might not understand the gravity/Illegality of actually viewing such footage.

The Fords aren't the smartest - but neither are many others. These "viewing parties" if true could bring charges unto themselves if they knowingly viewed under-aged activity ...

 

[Dilla]

I have been following this and think yours is the most plausible... but there's still one glaring whole: if it does involve sex with a minor, most would refuse to watch it and those who had wouldn't admit as it adds illegality on top of the element of disgust.

It may not be known if she's a minor. I heard she was, I'm sure the TPS is looking into it. Maybe she's just over 18? Or they haven't identified her yet. If it's true.

Also, I think I'm the only person who mentioned the viewing parties, and as stated (again, if true), they only saw the crack video.

 

[newearthling]

Is it too 'out there' to think the video could involve RF having sex with his football proteges?
Some of them used to sleep over at his house.

 

[Dilla]

I think mine makes more sense. They get him chewed, then put a girl on him and film him. It's a set up. I don't there is that many multiple videos from different times. It's a lot easier to film this kind of thing when someone is that messed.

 

[newearthling]

I joined this forum because of the discussion on Rob Ford, but I'm also very much interested in issues of urban planning, and it seems apt that this thread is hosted on this website. As someone who has lived in Europe and New York City prior to moving to Toronto, I'm still often shocked by the lack of public spaces and the extreme over-reliance on cars that I find here, which in my view contribute to this current crisis of civil society. Much of Toronto is inhabited by people who are deeply annoyed by the fact that there are other people around them. They don't like to live in cities, because to them urbanity means being stuck in traffic and not being able to find parking.

I regularly take the 35 bus on Jane, or the 41 bus on Keele. Looking out the window, or getting off at various stops, I just get depressed by pretty much everything I see, and I feel sad for the people who keep squeezing onto the packed bus and who have to live in, what to me is a nightmarish environment. Once you get north of the Junction (or, let's say north of Eglinton, to be generous), all you see is drab strip malls and lonely people in their cars, decrepit apartment buildings or sidestreets of ugly little fenced-in bungalows with driveways, but no sidewalks. It's a hostile, mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring environment, where there are no real public spaces and healthy human relationships seem an impossibility. I've often thought, half-jokingly, that I would kill myself if I had to live there. So smoking crack seems like a good option, actually.

In short, I feel that this whole crisis, with Ford and his supporters being who they are, is ultimately the outcome of a colossal failure of urban planning that has shaped the inner suburbs over the last 50 years or so. People who stay south of Bloor (and I myself do that whenever I can) can pretend that this world doesn't exist, but this Halloween it has come back to haunt them.

What a thoughtful post.
There is a kind of provincialism that still lingers in Ontario. I think that is what you might experience when people have the fortress of their house, grass and white picket fence to hide in.
I moved here from Vancouver. And I couldn't understand why Toronto was always called a friendly city, since it always seemed so cold so much of the time.
Maybe one good thing to come out of this is that Rob Ford will help people start opening up to each other.

 

[Delwin]

Hi, I've been lurking for some time and decided to chime in.

Could be that the Woman was Jaclyn Dawe. She is 35 but looks somewhat young. More importantly she has been missing since Feb.9 and her last known whereabouts was 51 Benway Drive in Toronto, a place listed as having been surveilled by police in the ITO. And a place where Lisi's red mustang was reported to have been parked:

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/pdfs/25667.pdf

This would definitely add a twist to the story.

*Edit Dawe not Dawes

 

[facepalming_brooklynite]

" Much of Toronto is inhabited by people who are deeply annoyed by the fact that there are other people around them"

wow, that is probably the best description of Toronto I have ever heard

Thanks!

 

[newearthling]

I think mine makes more sense. They get him chewed, then put a girl on him and film him. It's a set up. I don't there is that many multiple videos from different times. It's a lot easier to film this kind of thing when someone is that messed.

Poor girl. I hope she wasn't raped. That would be unthinkable.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

=facepalming_brooklynite;782242 Much of Toronto is inhabited by people who are deeply annoyed by the fact that there are other people around them.

Says the guy who would rather die than live with suburbanites; oh, sorry, IN SUBURBIA.

This is a friendly forum so I'll just say I find this ridiculous. There all sorts of ills that can be linked to urban sprawl and to the way housing projects used to be built etc., that's not in dispute. But to suggest that everything north of the Junction is a "hostile, mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring environment," says far far more about your inability to live with other people, and to understand the city you ACTUALLY live in (because, more people live in Toronto's suburbs, to say nothing of the regional municipalities than downtown), than the Oprah-psychology 101 factors that explain Rob Ford.

Moreover, the idea that people would all be living downtown if they could but choose to live elsewhere may be baffling to you, but it's perfectly rational to them. You don't get to dictate what the "right" way to live is, as if everything outside Old Toronto is a dumping ground for the soul-less, traffic-hating denizens of urbanity. Yeah, that's what suburbanites are: people who mostly care about easy parking. You'd live there if you were poor? That's nice. That's their home, man.

Yeah, riding up Keele or Jane is not exactly the flashiest way to see the city but it's not so long ago that Ossington and Parkdale and Leslieville looked no better. What you're talking about is the gap between the city you think Toronto is (or should be), and the reality you're forced to confront. A lot of people trying to figure out where the hell Ford came from are in the same boat and frankly he probably is too. That's because no one wants to play nice. You want to say "I'm a REAL TORONTONIAN and suburbanites are not," and then they get pissed off because they live in Toronto too but don't want to (or can't) live in a $1M, 100-year-old house in Cabbagetown and so, in your eyes, they don't count. That's the resentment that gets you a Rob Ford.

If everyone in the city stopped and actually embraced its entirety...well, that might be a better solution than tearing it apart or offering half-baked theories about how horrible most of it is.

 

[Dilla]

Dude, I'd like to think the TPS would all over a rape.

 

[runningnowhere]

I think mine makes more sense. They get him chewed, then put a girl on him and film him. It's a set up. I don't there is that many multiple videos from different times. It's a lot easier to film this kind of thing when someone is that messed.

So instead of reacting rationally and going to the police when they are blackmailed, the Ford bros attempt to get the video. It OK though, they have been blackmailed before. They're thugs, so they act like thugs and hire hackers and use threats of violence through Lisi and maybe others, hence the extortion charge. Puts the vice story in perspective. Kinda all coming together, but I don't think it's all as sinister as we think.

 

[newearthling]

Hi, I've been lurking for some time and decided to chime in.

Could be that the Woman was Jaclyn Dawes. She is 35 but looks somewhat young. More importantly she has been missing since Feb.9 and her last known whereabouts was 51 Benway Drive in Toronto, a place listed as having been surveilled by police in the ITO. And a place where Lisi's red mustang was reported to have been parked:

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/pdfs/25667.pdf

This would definitely add a twist to the story.

Yes. She has been mentioned before, many pages back. People are sensitive to the fact that she is still missing, and not part of the RF crowd.
She is a physio therapist and could have possibly been helping the guy with the limp (can't remember his name.)