Mayor Rob Ford working from hospital bed
Even from his hospital bed, Mayor Rob Ford was making calls to constituents to help solve their problems.
And that is saying something since the man was in obvious discomfort Monday.
“Not too good,” he told me over the phone from Mount Sinai hospital of how he was feeling.
He sure didn’t sound good. Horrible in fact.
He was coughing and hacking and talking with a heavy breath.
“I’m feeling pretty sick,” he admitted.
Still, it did not stop him from trying to do some of his job as mayor. He may not be running for the job on Oct. 27, but he still is mayor of Toronto.
His chief of staff, Dan Jacobs, and assistant, Amin Massoudi, confirmed the mayor had asked for some files.
“He wanted his clipboard with numbers of people who called,” said Jacobs.
Massoudi confirmed he was making calls.
“You have got to carry on,” Ford told me of why he’s “trying” to do some work.
That said, the truth is the mayor is very ill as he awaits biopsy results on a tumour found in his abdomen last week.
He had a very bad night Sunday and was feeling nauseous Monday. Mayor Ford said he was “vomiting” a lot and was in considerable pain. He also had some invasive testing Monday. The mayor described it as doctors “going into my lungs” with a "scope" to take "another biopsy."
“It’s pretty tricky right now,” he said of where things are at with his health.
Ford said the reality is he has too much in front of him medically to even consider continue running for mayor and is glad his brother Doug will continue for him. He said he is hopeful he can recover and go back to “helping people” in his old job as a councillor for Etobicoke North (Ward 2).
Councillor Doug Ford was very quiet Monday.
“His focus right now is more on the mayor but he will talk about the campaign when he is ready to,” said someone close to him.
The first clue that things are not going to ramp up in the Doug Ford campaign this week was Monday’s decision to postpone Friday’s planned Ford Fest until, perhaps, Sept. 28.
This did not stop an opposition campaign from going on the attack.
In endorsing John Tory’s bid for mayor, Councillor Jaye Robinson called the switch of Doug Ford for mayor instead of Rob a “game of chess” and that “the pattern continues of circus acts and really humiliating the city on an international level.”
Tory himself said Doug Ford as mayor could be “worse” for Toronto than Rob.
One Ford insider called it “crass.”
And the leader of a march to bring attention to the persecution of Christians around the world said the comments were “beyond the pale.”
Charles McVety, President of Canada Christian College, said more than 500 people stopped outside of Mount Sinai Hospital Saturday and “prayed for Mayor Ford.”
He said he was upset at Robinson’s remarks or that Tory did not denounce them:
“I am appalled that while Mayor Rob Ford lies waiting in hospital fearing for his life, John Tory holds a press conference with Jaye Robinson complaining ‘the pattern continues of circus acts.’ This appears cold and callous and eerily similar to the cruel attack on Jean Chretien’s facial impediment,” said McVety. “A lot of people fervently prayed for the healing of the mayor. Concern for life and death should trump political machinations.”
I agree with Charles, but even Mayor Ford is thinking politics while in hospital.
He told me he fully supports his brother Doug stepping in to run in his place and has even been offering some pointers. One insider told me it was a funny scene over the weekend watching the mayor giving Doug Ford “some advice and strategy.”
John Tory is entitled to politic in a tough way but perhaps until Doug Ford is ready to participate, he and his supporters could take a page out of classy Olivia Chow’s book and wait at least until the devastated Ford family understands Mayor Ford’s diagnoses.
The Fords, including Randy and his mom, Diane — as well as wife Renata and his kids — are all distraught over the mayor’s condition. True the mayor may be making calls to taxpayers from his sick bed, but he really is very sick and no one is closer to him than his big brother Doug
