Ford Nation: How Populism Took Hold in Toronto

I live in Pickering, just east of the city of Toronto, and have spent most of the last 35 years working in Toronto, so I tend to think of myself as a Torontonian, even though I don't live there. I love the city; it's safe, multicultural, vibrant, and has more good restaurants than I could sample in a dozen lifetimes. But it's not perfect, and the major imperfections are its transit and its politics, which are tightly intertwined.

Toronto's politics has been tumultuous during the last decade and the main reason for that comes from one family, the Fords. The late Rob Ford won one term as mayor and probably would have won a second if he hadn't developed a fatal cancer. His brother, Doug Ford, won election as a city councillor and is now the premier of Ontario, a post that he has used to shaft Toronto at every opportunity.

I've made no secret of how much I detest the Fords, especially Doug, who is now in a position to do real damage to, not just Toronto, but the people of Ontario. I find it difficult to understand how a man who is so manifestly unqualified to hold public office has attained the premiership. In Ford Nation: How Populism Took Hold in Toronto, Rob Florida looks at the rise of the Ford dynasty and analyses the demographic and political factors behind it.

Before Trump, the late Rob Ford rose to power in Toronto, arguably North America’s most diverse city, filled with tall towers, dense walkable streets, and a vibrant knowledge economy, with a long history of progressivism on social issues. Rob Ford’s rise was not just a one-off event: It was part of a much broader populist movement dubbed “Ford Nation” that ended up propelling his brother Doug to the much more powerful post of premier of Ontario.

The rise of Ford’s brand of populism in Toronto is the subject of a new study by my University of Toronto colleagues Daniel Silver and Fernando Calderón-Figueroa, and Zack Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Western Ontario. Their detailed research is a warning to all of us, especially to left-leaning urbanists, that populism can grow in superstar cities. So exactly how did Ford’s populism emerge in Toronto and Ontario, the largest city and largest province of a country whose national political scene is often noted as virtually immune to populism?

Florida's final words echo my thoughts exactly:

When Rob Ford’s originally rose to power in my adopted hometown of Toronto, I predicted that if he could take power in such a thriving diverse and progressive city, more would likely follow. After reading this study, I am more worried now than ever.