Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Meeting Rob Ford

In Honour of Rob Ford's first day on the job, let me tell you a story I have about meeting the man.

For those of you that don't know, I work at a high school. Our school hosted a townhall meeting in May this year for the mayoralty candidates. All of the candidates except George Smitherman attended, so I had a chance to meet and chat with all the front runners. The people I chatted with the most happened to be Rocco Rossi and Rob Ford.

Rocco was gracious enough to recognize me from before and we talked about writing and politics. I remember coming out of our conversation thinking, Rocco is a great guy, but I don't think he is going to win. I personally think he should make a run for something in the near future.

When I met Rob Ford, he came up to me, and the first thing he said was, Now here is a guy who has played Football before (I am 6'3 and not skinny). I introduced myself, and Rob asked me if I played Football. I said no, because my school never had Football when I was in high school, and that I run the Rugby program at this school, as well as playing both hockey and rugby. Rob then started trying to sell me on the merits of a Football program for my school, almost in way that was pushy.

He then told the students he would bring a football program to the school. When you have a school that is full of skinny Chinese kids, the first thought I had was, we barely have enough big bodies for a tight 5 (biggest meanest forwards in the scrum) in Rugby, how are we going to have both and offence and defence. Rob went on to tell the kids he would be setting up Football at my school. He then proceeded to tell the students to give him a call, and that he could give them jobs for the summer.

My impression of Rob is that he really cares about Football, and having more football teams. He is also a guy that I found easy to talk to, very personable like a guy behind a bbq. Will this make him a good mayor. I don't know, I am not an expert on judging adults. This is just an interesting story I had about meeting Rob Ford during the campaign.