Ford started using drugs after father died in 2006: book
Posted February 3, 2014 7:04 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO (NEWS1130) – One of the journalists who claims she’s seen the video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking from a crack pipe is out with a new book, detailing Ford’s rise to power and his family’s history of criminal activity and substance abuse.
Robyn Doolittle’s book Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story takes a close look at the personal life of the mayor as it traces his upbringing and the dynamics of a family that became wealthy through the hard work of his father. Doug Ford Sr. first built a successful label-printing business and later became a cabinet minister in the Mike Harris government of Ontario.
It was the death of the mayor’s father in 2006 that Doolittle claims triggered the substance abuse that has recently come to light.
“He was just utterly devastated by the death of his father. Also, that was the kind of person that they never wanted to let down and suddenly that figure was no longer there. So you didn’t have the guilt and you also had the grief. That seems to be the moment he went off the rails,” Doolittle told political reporter John Stall with our affiliate station, 680News in Toronto.
Doolittle also documents the concern of Ford’s wife Renata who told a confidante during a recorded conversation that Ford said he would give up the pills but not the cocaine when he was elected mayor.
