He was an incompetent mayor and used racial slurs that I found offensive. That is why I never supported him and my disappointment in him had its limits. However, I voted, donated resources and volunteered for Mayor John Tory, and that is why I find the actions of the current mayor and that of his most loyal allies within council even more hurtful.

If it had been your friend or family member demonstrating the same behaviour your first reaction would be to get them help, but our first reaction towards Ford was to want him to lose his job, blackball him from society, and then we laughed some more.

The trouble is that recent years have invigorated the mayor's brand of hyperbole politics. It pays out in spades for those willing to join the bandwagon and echo the "us versus them" chorus. Its cronies transcend party lines; its victims and resisters fade quickly from memory ("not a leader", anyone?). It is the Ford Nation creed. A new, normalized nastiness has imbued the body politic, harshly demarking who is "one of us" and who is to be cast aside. Its candidates bob in the fickle surf of prejudice or fashionable platitudes, instead of wading into their own vision or fair-minded convictions.

Anyone who has been down to the Harbourfront recently knows that Queens Quay is under construction. The streetcar tracks are being replaced and Waterfront Toronto is building a new tree-lined promenade that will be spectacular once complete, but creates traffic chaos in the meantime. Although I expected the construction on Queens Quay, nothing prepared me for the trifecta of traffic interruptions that followed. Traffic was already heavy because it was the season home opener for the Argos. That would have been fine, if the rest of the transportation network had been working.