Rogue mayors who are not Rob Ford
Last Sunday, the august New York Times rhapsodized at great length about the cultural and culinary charms of Canada's largest city.Last Monday, the mayor of Canada's largest city, a walking polar vortex, went on late-night American television to talk about his serial and varied drug and drink excesses....
Last Sunday, the august New York Times rhapsodized at great length about the cultural and culinary charms of Canada's largest city.
Last Monday, the mayor of Canada's largest city, a walking polar vortex, went on late-night American television to talk about his serial and varied drug and drink excesses.Two views of a city in transition.
Extolling Toronto's restaurants to Americans in its greatest newspaper is one rung on the city's cultural ladder. Exposing late-night audiences to more displays of the mayor's frolicsome persona is quite something else.
Toronto's mayor has certainly become the best-known Canadian on the planet. In an election year, that might turn out to be advantageous.
Americans are used to rogue mayors, even the out-and-out crooks they elect from time to time. Every time the sins of the mayor of Toronto are reiterated, the name of Washington's infamous drug mayor, Marion Barry, is trotted out. And the mayors of both New Orleans and Detroit have been convicted of various felonies and misdemeanors.
I have over my desk a photo of two of the most infamous mayors in US political annals. John Honey "Fitz" Fitzgerald, grandfather of a future president, was mayor of Boston for a number of years. He was reduced to political ruin by nefarious misappropriations involving public monies, and by his affair with a notorious cigarette girl gloriously named Tootles Ryan. His successor, the other Irishman in the photo, was James Michael Curley, who was the 41st, 43rd, 45th and 48th mayor of Boston.
Curley was so popular with Boston's poor and Irish, he was elected to the Board of Aldermen while serving a prison term for fraud. He became governor of Massachusetts, was elected to Congress, went to jail again after the war and was pardoned by Harry Truman. His funeral attracted the largest crowd in the city's history and his story spawned the novel The Last Hurrah and the movie with Spencer Tracy as the Curley figure named Frank Skeffington.
James John Walker - known as Jimmy and Beau James - was mayor of New York from 1926 to 1932, the height of prohibition. He was also known as the city's Night Mayor for the late hours he kept and the very little time he spent on the city's business. Walker loved show girls, fancy clothes, public spectacle and parades, unlike the mayor of Toronto. His favorite parade was the We Want Beer annual anti-prohibition march. Walker was thoroughly corrupt but adored by his constituents. He was finally turfed from office. He moved to Europe for awhile and died in 1946 in his home town.
We have had a fair share of rogue mayors in this country. In Quebec, a government commission on public corruption led to the resignation of one mayor of Montreal. His replacement has been arrested, along with a second large city chief magistrate and criminal charges have been laid against two small town mayors.
The question big city people keep asking each other is "Why do we keep voting for these people?" ...if, as comedian Rick Mercer says, municipal politics is "a depository of the truly mad."
Last Monday, the mayor of Canada's largest city, a walking polar vortex, went on late-night American television to talk about his serial and varied drug and drink excesses.Two views of a city in transition.
Extolling Toronto's restaurants to Americans in its greatest newspaper is one rung on the city's cultural ladder. Exposing late-night audiences to more displays of the mayor's frolicsome persona is quite something else.
Americans are used to rogue mayors, even the out-and-out crooks they elect from time to time. Every time the sins of the mayor of Toronto are reiterated, the name of Washington's infamous drug mayor, Marion Barry, is trotted out. And the mayors of both New Orleans and Detroit have been convicted of various felonies and misdemeanors.
I have over my desk a photo of two of the most infamous mayors in US political annals. John Honey "Fitz" Fitzgerald, grandfather of a future president, was mayor of Boston for a number of years. He was reduced to political ruin by nefarious misappropriations involving public monies, and by his affair with a notorious cigarette girl gloriously named Tootles Ryan. His successor, the other Irishman in the photo, was James Michael Curley, who was the 41st, 43rd, 45th and 48th mayor of Boston.
Curley was so popular with Boston's poor and Irish, he was elected to the Board of Aldermen while serving a prison term for fraud. He became governor of Massachusetts, was elected to Congress, went to jail again after the war and was pardoned by Harry Truman. His funeral attracted the largest crowd in the city's history and his story spawned the novel The Last Hurrah and the movie with Spencer Tracy as the Curley figure named Frank Skeffington.
James John Walker - known as Jimmy and Beau James - was mayor of New York from 1926 to 1932, the height of prohibition. He was also known as the city's Night Mayor for the late hours he kept and the very little time he spent on the city's business. Walker loved show girls, fancy clothes, public spectacle and parades, unlike the mayor of Toronto. His favorite parade was the We Want Beer annual anti-prohibition march. Walker was thoroughly corrupt but adored by his constituents. He was finally turfed from office. He moved to Europe for awhile and died in 1946 in his home town.
We have had a fair share of rogue mayors in this country. In Quebec, a government commission on public corruption led to the resignation of one mayor of Montreal. His replacement has been arrested, along with a second large city chief magistrate and criminal charges have been laid against two small town mayors.
The question big city people keep asking each other is "Why do we keep voting for these people?" ...if, as comedian Rick Mercer says, municipal politics is "a depository of the truly mad."