There Is No Escaping The Madness Of Mayor Ford

A Dispatch home from the Atlantic shores by Doug Draper

Cape Cod, Massachusetts – After being so immersed in the madness of what is going on in politics in our dear old Canada over the last many months, it was time for an escape to my home away from home on Cape Cod.

This sign graced the front door of a very popular shop on Cape Cod as this dispatch was posted, proving , once again, that you can run but you could not hide from the madness of Rob Ford. Photo courtesy of Claudia Farber.

So Mary and I packed our suitcases and my guitar and headed off to the Old Sea Pines Inn on Cape to join our annual gathering of friends for American Thanksgiving. We passed Rochester, Syracuse, Utica and Albany New York, and finally crossed the border in to Massachusetts and I’m thinking; ‘Well thank God. That’s it for a week. No more crap about the Canadian senate or the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on the cancellation of plans to build gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga, or the Rob and Doug Ford clown show in Toronto ’I’m pleased to report that I have not  been subjected to any maddening news about the Senate or those gas-fired plant, or any other news federally and provincially, for that matter. But Rob Ford? Almost every person we crossed paths with you saw our Ontario license plate or found out we were from Ontario in some other way asked us, in so many words; ‘What gives with that mayor you’ve got up there in Toronto?’

I’ve been coming down to Cape Cod for more than 50 years now, going back to the days when my parents, brother and sister vacationed here, and I can tell you that there has never been much of an interest in Canadian politics. Most people we’ve met here over all those years could probably not name a single person who ever served as prime minister of Canada, but they sure and hell know who Rob Ford is and for about the first time since the Blue Jays won two World Series championships in a row, they are interested in Toronto – for all the wrong reasons. 

Down here in New England, Rob Ford is a Saturday Night Live skit – a joke – and everyone keeps asking me why he can’t be recalled or impeached or kicked out of office in some other way, and I have to resort the usual blah, blah, blah that in that city you can’t just throw a duly elected mayor or member of council out of office, regardless of how much damage they may do to the city’s reputation or standing across the world.

In the middle of all of this, a friend in our Thanksgiving gathering, Claudia Farber from New Jersey, said that she had a photo image she wanted to share with me that she took at a very popular shop on the Cape called the Birdwatcher’s General Store. The image was of a white board outside the front door of the store where the following words were scrawled; ‘Our three most popular nuts – peanuts, walnuts, the mayor Toronto.’

For the most part, Mary and I have had a wonderful escape, but we found out early on that there was no escape from the madness of Mayor Rob Ford. That’s unless I do what he has now confessed to doing more than once – going on a drunkin stuper.

Fortunately, the Old Sea Pines has, among its more organically gentle and soothing features that can send one on a natural high, a well-stocked bar.

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