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DOUG FORD and his family have been waging war on Toronto — the city they have claimed to serve — for decades, and he’s had his hands around Toronto’s throat since he barged into office as premier back in 2018, using Toronto-bashing as a wedge issue to win support from the rest of the province.

His recent attack on bike lanes, though in effect province-wide, is another stick in the spokes of autonomy for Toronto as Big Daddy Dougie continues to insist, he knows what’s best for the city — one he traverses in a massive black Escalade SUV — a city that rejected him when he ran for mayor in 2014.

The so-called People’s Premier made it clear he wasn’t going to take any shit from a bunch of downtown artsy twats when, within a year of taking office in 2018, he smashed his way into an in-progress, 2019 Toronto civic election, slashing what was to be a 47-person council to 25 — mid-campaign. The expansion of council was the result of a years-long process designed to increase representation, diversity and, ultimately, democracy, in Toronto. But kicking Toronto in the crotch plays big in Belleville, Burk’s Falls and Bracebridge, so too bad if the most grassroots level of civic engagement — local council races — is cynically dispatched just as the communities are most engaged working for their candidates. And there was a huge financial cost to candidates who were not backed by party machines.

Ford’s lack of regard for democracy was further demonstrated by his “Golden Ticket” approach to city hall, his super mayor powers giving the mayor a veto over council decisions that he brought in hoping buddy John Tory would get to use them. This tool has proven so vile and anti-democratic that almost no mayors in Ontario, certainly not Olivia Chow, are prepared to use it.

Now, as Ford grabs at populist pleasure points like Homer Simpson skipping through a field of chocolate daisies, all designed to supercharge his base so he can call an early election before Pierre Poilievre gets in and fouls the Conservative brand, going after bike lanes is a gimme for gearing-up his city-hating, car-loving base.

And as he relentlessly proceeds in his efforts to clear both Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre to make way for his buddies’ mega-projects despite citizens’ and city hall’s objections, Ford defiantly defends imposing his will on a city that doesn’t want this destruction, saying emphatically, “It’s called Ontario Place” as if to suggest his efforts are one more attempt to not have those city fucks tell the rest of the province what to do.

How cynical is it to wage war on your hometown to win favour with city-bashers across the province? No more cynical than a teetotaller chasing votes by increasing access to booze at the same time as attacking support services for people with addictions — safe injection sites — even though his own family has been wracked by substance abuse. Booze and drugs may have destroyed and damaged lives in the Ford family, but that’s not Dougie’s problem when there are votes to grab — consequences be damned.

Ford’s massive smile and bear-paw-sized handshake hide a cynical politician not afraid to take a chainsaw, metaphorically and literally, to the city he grew up in to win votes from the rest of the province. His vote-lust will only grow more demonic as he sniffs a chance to stay in power next year, gaining the chance to finish handing over massive swaths of Ontario to be bulldozed by his buddies.

While Mayor Olivia Chow has managed to navigate Ford and his ego to wrestle some concessions from the premier, like off-loading to the province the expressways he loves so much, his patronizing and paternalistic attitude towards her and the city is hard to endure as he makes it clear Chow and council are permitted to operate at his fiat.

I wrote a cover story in NOW Magazine in 2011 called “Rob Ford’s War on Toronto” detailing how the then-mayor and his then-councillor brother Doug were selling out the city to appease suburban, downtown-hating voters. Those were the days of Ford muttering, “Subways, subways, subways” and calling it a transit plan as he tore up a funded Transit City while the brothers’ idea of urban visioning was putting up a Ferris wheel and mega-mall on the waterfront.

A year later, I was in then-mayor Ford’s office for a meeting with him, and he was giddy to show me around. I was stunned to see three NOW magazine covers on the wall, all of them slamming him. Apparently, the mayor missed the point. But the biggest NOW cover on his wall, blown up to massive proportions, was the one depicting him in an army helmet with the headline “Rob Ford’s War on Toronto.” Unapologetic — he was proud to be seen as kicking Toronto’s ass.

And like his troubled little brother, Big Brother Doug is happy to toss the needs of Toronto into the flames of an election campaign if it can win him votes. It’s a dangerous time for the city as Ford chases votes at Toronto’s expense and a time when we must be prepared to fight rather than crumble under the premier’s relentless attacks.