A year ago this week (and this day, as I write this on Tuesday) Toronto Council did a very bold, and also quite fearful thing. In a meeting specially called for the purpose, council voted to dethrone the Mayor of the day, and select a new leader from among their own.
It is the closest a government in this city has come to open revolt — and one might hope, the closest it will ever come to happening again.
Looking back over the past year, it’s fair to say Toronto’s experiment with revolution has been at least a measured success.
Part of that may be that the roots of this particular revolution dovetailed so well with our national identity.
Not so much a Quiet Revolution, it was a Polite Revolution against a Fordian tyranny of Bad Behaviour.
Mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug perhaps unwittingly stoked that revolution during the meeting where council cut the mayor’s budget and stripped him of his powers, hollering at audience members, telling sex jokes and at one point knocking councillor Pam McConnell to the ground without so much as an excuse-me-ma’am.
Norm Kelly was a true Father of the Revolution as he embraced his enhanced role as Deputy (and de-facto) Mayor. He visited his shell-shocked council colleagues one by one, said his please-and-thank-yous, and even as the Mayor-in-Exile’s spiralling drama continued in the public corridors outside their offices and during parts of the monthly council meetings.
For the most part, council managed to politely ignore the Ford brothers, in a quintessentially Canadian way — passing an inoffensive budget, delaying an uncomfortable conversation about jets at the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, averting eyes at the prospect of hurrying ahead on city-wide contracting out of garbage collection.
Things got boisterous on the campaign trail, but things do, and Torontonians clearly were only willing to have so much of it.
While some may have hankered for the old, hoot-and-holler approach to municipal governance, most turned away from Rob’s brother Doug Ford and cast their votes with the one candidate on the planet who could give even Norm Kelly a few lessons in table manners, the forcefully pleasant John Tory.
This more than anything is evidence that the Polite Revolution has taken hold on at least a semi-permanent basis.
As it turns out, Torontonians are not only fond of the traditional Canadian values of Peace, Order and Good Government: after a year of exposure to it, we’re also as it turns out fond of just a little peace and quiet.