Unconventional Candour

by George Smitherman

  * * *

  What political lessons were learned? In the twenty-first century, conventional wisdom about campaigns needs to be thrown out. It used to be that to win a mayoral race you needed name recognition and money. I outspent Ford in the campaign by half a million dollars ($2.2 million to $1.7 million). But Ford could have won without spending a penny, thanks to social media. If you hit the vein just right, social media has so much potential to propel you forward. (Ask Trump.) The web is tailor-made for sloganeering, and as a society we have become more susceptible to slogans instead of substance. The more knowledge we get through the web, the less wisdom we have. It is the triumph of entertainment over news: it is “infotainment.”

  As for old-style media, I was battered by voices on the right, particularly hotline radio hosts, but I got little or no help from the progressive side. Right-wing personalities always complain that liberals dominate the mainstream media. But it isn’t really true, because the liberal or centrist media outlets mostly refuse to play a partisan game and perhaps sometimes set a higher bar for the candidates who share their values. Whereas the right-wingers in the media see a candidate they like and throw everything behind him, progressive candidates never get that sort of support. Yes, the Toronto Star gave me a strong editorial endorsement, but its news pages were filled with stories about Tory, Pantalone, and Rossi as well as me. Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail gave me a tepid endorsement after flirting with Rossi. The Sun’s endorsement of Ford was full-throated, and its news pages reflected that bias toward the end of the campaign and right up until today. In fact, a former paid apologist for Rob Ford currently serves as editor of the Sun.

  Still, when you blow a big lead in a campaign, as I did, conventional wisdom would argue that you sat on your lead and became too cautious. From a policy standpoint, I would reject that analysis of my campaign. My platform was both comprehensive and ambitious and stands up to the test of time. However, I may have made a mistake by trying to look “mayoral” rather than defaulting to my “furious George” persona. Looking back, and boy have I ever, I have often wished that just once I had said: “How can a man who looks like he drinks from the gravy boat stop the gravy train?” My campaign team also shot down my proposal to project the movie Tommy Boy, with Chris Farley in the title role, onto the wall of a historic building as our contribution to the annual Nuit Blanche event. (I wanted to call it the “Rob Ford Film Festival,” as Farley and Ford shared much in common.) But in my heart I know I did the right thing by not reverting to the role I had played in chasing Mike Harris out of Queen’s Park or bringing unruly hospital CEOs to heel. My son, Michael, made the difference by motivating me to remain calm and keep my options open for an obvious next chapter.

  My gentlemanly conduct was tested further when, after the campaign results were tallied, it became clear that each campaign except mine had a deficit. John Tory was among those who pushed me to participate in a big dinner that was organized to pay off the debts of Ford and the others, as doing this for Hall and Miller in an earlier tussle aided his reputation. To say the least, I was incredibly reluctant to take part and did so only because part of the proceeds were destined to help Sarah Thomson. Needless to say, I didn’t hang around to get my picture taken with the mayor-elect, but etched in my mind is the image of many of those I knew doing so. As my father once told me after a hockey game where I came out on the losing end of a battle, “Sometimes the best you can do is take his number.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Worse Than Defeat

  Conceding the election to a thug like Rob Ford was going to be tough enough to swallow emotionally. Accordingly, when I wrote my remarks (there was only one speech prepared), I planned to introduce Christopher and Michael in my final words so as not to belie my emotion and cue the crying. That careful preparation went for naught, however, as someone missed the cue and Christopher and Michael came on stage prematurely. That forced me off-script, which turned out perfectly. For a defeated politician, the outstretched arms of a not-yet-two-year-old, held by the man who stood beside me, offered sweet sanctuary. Let’s face it, I was going to need it.

  * * *

  The one and only great transition from campaign loser to father took place just after the election at our condo’s party room, where we celebrated Michael’s second birthday. The opportunity to express sadness through joy, or some such formula, meant that the outpouring of material love was overwhelming, and I am sure it messed with Michael’s sense of expectations for all time. There were so many presents that he kept opening them for days and days, to the point where his first Christmas with us, which was already destined to be over the top, became indistinguishable except for the seasonal wrapping paper. The birthday was a three-week run.

  One of the points of liberation that came from being unelected was that our residence no longer needed to be tied to a particular political territory. (The law doesn’t say you must live where you run, but as a rule of thumb I preferred to do that.) On top of that, we wanted a backyard to give our kid more room to roam. (By now in life, I think parks and the public realm matter more, and I long to return to a condo!) During the mayoral campaign, I knocked on a door and I was impressed by what I saw. The house was for sale, and I saw it online. In addition to being affordable, it was within walking distance of my tennis club. So we moved from our condo on Carlton Street to Davenport Road between Christie and Ossington.

  The local parks and shopping were great, and the open-concept layout of the home allowed the kitchen and the dining room to emerge as the focus. This was so appropriate, because Christopher’s best energies were saved for using food to make people happy (and for balloon fights, according to the kids, who remember them so fondly).

  My new private-sector life had me out less in the evenings, although I was prone to a fair bit of travel to Asia. But once Christopher returned to work, our combined incomes allowed us a reasonably good quality of life. And George Brown’s daycare at Scotia Plaza proved a convenient and accommodating venue for Michael, who despite his obvious charms is occasionally quite a handful.

  When the September 2011 provincial election rolled around, I made a speech or two at the opening of campaign offices. But I skipped election day and took my family on a luxurious and long-dreamed-of return to Las Vegas. We stayed at the Four Seasons, where the staff pampered Michael and arranged care so Christopher and I could attend a One Republic concert with our feet dipped in a wave pool, followed by a fine dinner and some gambling. True to form, we came back to the room an hour before our curfew.

  One of the most memorable things we did was use a multi-year bounty of Aeroplan points for the three of us to take a helicopter ride over the Hoover Dam and out to the Grand Canyon. The vibration put Michael to sleep instantly in both directions, so he can’t fully recall the sensation of flying in a helicopter. But we have great photos taken that day. Returning to the Grand Canyon after having visited there as a kid was amazing for me. After Trump is gone, I may consider taking my family back.

  * * *

  We had heard from the nice staff at CAS that Michael’s mom had had another baby — a little girl — and that mother and child were doing well. Of course, knowing that historically the mother had struggled to maintain connections despite her obvious love meant we might be called upon to expand our circle of love.

  What hit me about Christopher’s response to the opportunity to adopt Kayla (we dropped several other names she had been given but we liked the name Kayla a lot) was his insistence that, rather than take another leave from Lindt, he should quit altogether. I wish I could say I reluctantly went along with this, but I didn’t put up the least resistance. Rather, I concluded that if there was a point in our life where I could afford to carry us, it was then. The part I was slow to get, and that Christopher discounted or missed entirely, was the extent to which his confidence was tied to his mastery of the retail chocolate environment. Oddly enough, his prior promotion meant that when he returned to the workplace his job had shif
ted from operationalizing the frontline to presenting the budget and plans for the frontline back at headquarters. Or, put another way, Christopher was shifting from day-to-day interaction with retail employees to a results-driven executive leadership team at head office. The latter was a tougher fit for Christopher.

  Now I would like to say to anybody with one kid who is feeling pressure to acquire another: think about it long and hard. Because what seemed like more than ample resources for one kid quickly became a stretch to manage two. The added pressure seemed to create an uptick in Christopher’s alcohol consumption. To try to spread the burden, I adjusted my own sleep and work patterns. I often exercised at 6 a.m. before heading to work, early enough to allow me to get back and take the kids to the wading pool late in the afternoon.

  The deterioration of Christopher’s mental health in this period was a real challenge, and his history of attempts at taking his own life resurfaced. Before eventually succumbing to his own devices, Christopher made two bold efforts to accomplish the same pain-ending feat. One of those, his disappearance and eventual discovery in a clump of bushes along a railway line, is well known. As is my memory of sitting down on my deck to pen some remarks that Barbara Hall was to deliver soon after to searchers on my behalf, only to have my privacy interrupted by a helicopter hovering directly overhead. It was as if they could see what I was writing.

  Frankly, the shame Christopher suffered in realizing that he had created such a circus was nearly impossible for him to get over. Sad as it is to say, it was pretty much clear that at some point he would take his own life, and we had this conversation very openly in the company of his (and later my) psychiatrist. She reminded us that, if a person wishes to die, we are quite powerless to stop it.

  After an earlier overdose attempt where his cellphone gave him away, Christopher expressed dismay that he had left his phone on. In the latter case, he did not share my enthusiasm, or that of the kids, that Ranger the police dog had found him where he lay after bouncing off a slow-moving freight train. That same meeting with the psychiatrist was our only real conversation about the underlying trauma that made Christopher’s life so tormented. He confirmed that he had been sexually abused at the hands of a trusted figure in his youth, but he delved no further.

  Around midafternoon the day before Christopher died, I pretty much knew the show was over when I received an email from him promising a final result. He asked us not to sound the alarm as precautions on his part were going to make this a recovery, not a rescue, mission. My fervent efforts to trace debit and credit card transactions were fruitless but were an outlet for my energy during a period that felt a lot like the final hours on election day when the outcome is in doubt. Tick tick tick.

  My mother had swooped in and picked up the kids Sunday afternoon, and their ability to roll with the situation was tested once more. By 5:00 a.m. the next day, I got a confirming word from the coroner that Christopher had died. I spread the word to close family, dictated the fateful tweet, and called my mother for my children’s return. By 9:00 a.m., I squeezed my children tightly and told Kayla, then age three-and-a-half, and Michael, five, that Dada wouldn’t be coming home. That he was dead. Their grasp was at first limited to the practical with Michael asking, “Who is going to feed us?” From that day until now, my crew of two hugs-and-cuddles have filled the void and saved the day.

  People have different strategies about how to approach the complicated matter of death with children. While I didn’t then explicitly tell Michael and Kayla that their father had taken his own life, I did tell them that his brain let him down, not his body. It’s not my style to bullshit around subjects to begin with, and so I have been gripped with fear trying to balance my need to be the first to tell them, with the attendant reality that another kid’s Google search could lead to schoolyard humiliation. Get the spelling of the family name right and it’s not too many clicks before you find the full story about Michael and Kayla’s Dada.

  Only more recently have I explained to Michael and Kayla that Dada took his own life because he was in pain and sometimes our brain can send us the wrong messages. “How did he die?” they asked. “He stopped breathing,” I said. The real details of his death are left to be a burden shared between me and very few others, and I repeat what I said at Christopher’s memorial about the good fortune I experienced by actually knowing the deputy coroner who attended to Christopher. About Christopher’s taking of his own life, Kayla recently said as we crossed the street to school: “It’s sad and it’s a little bit mean.”

  In organizing the memorial for Christopher, I unearthed the really sad reality of his life: the underlying unwillingness on the part of his parents to let him be who he was and truly respect him for that. “Don’t bother going to Toronto for his memorial,” his parents told everyone in Sudbury. “We will do something for him here in Sudbury.” And what they did for him in Sudbury was hold a Catholic funeral mass. This for a man who had a pronounced and undisguised disdain for the Catholic Church and was notably an atheist. I protested to his mother, who in the same sentence blamed me for his death and proclaimed that he was baptized with his god and that he shall be with his god in death. To say any more about the matter would not shed any more light on it.

  Christopher’s Toronto memorial was attended by hundreds, including dignitaries and, especially, the many he had touched professionally over the decades. Our yellow bird was free, but his flock was deeply burdened by the events. I don’t really know how we have survived. The depth of despair I felt was intense, but the saving grace was the pitter-patter of feet on the floor. Because my kids are such good cuddlers, they wore my sadness away with the comfort of love.

  We headed for Florida. Our customary twenty-four hours of driving put some real distance on the pain. Anxious as I was to get there in my stepmother’s Chrysler 300, we attracted attention from two separate representatives of the constabulary. One, an OPP officer near London, took a look at my driver’s licence, offered condolences on our loss, and wished us a good day. Not sure how exactly, but about ten hours later a similar courtesy was offered by the police as we slipped from Tennessee into Georgia. Perhaps my sadness was etched in my face.

  My best advice to anybody facing the devastating impacts of trauma is to respect it for what it is, and I hope you have kids. The former is to help people escape the guilt they feel from having no motivation to do anything. The latter — having kids — is because, no matter how shitty you might feel, you can’t just climb back under the duvet, or in my case chase a longish high down a funnel of self-fulfilling despair. The emotional needs of the kids forced me to adjust my work away from the office and toward home. The ideal of everyone finishing a night’s sleep in his or her own bed was shattered, and despite the annoyance I needed the comfort as much as they did.

  Our language has taught us to say things like, “We will be there for you” and “Anything we can do?” and “Don’t worry.” Almost all of those expressions are sincerely uttered but largely unfulfillable. I have personally skipped many funerals since Christopher passed because my trauma quotient has remained so high. But when I do attend, I try very hard to tell people: “Respect the trauma.”

  It’s been tough on my little people. Michael quite understandably suffers from fears of abandonment, and Kayla longs for more attachment. For all that we have been through, however, we get stronger and better every day. But not a day goes by that we don’t make note of how much we miss Christopher. He found his peace, and everywhere we see yellow birds we feel his presence.

  There are just so many music anthems to rely upon, each one a soundtrack for my life inside and outside politics. The great gay anthem, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” comes to my mind often, as well as Kanye West’s “Stronger,” which paraphrases Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous dictum that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Michael certainly seems to identify with Shawn Mendes’s song “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back.”

  Christopher walking h
appily with his first daughter, Morgan, and Michael and Kayla.

  At various times, I have had people tell me how great a man I am for sticking it out and not walking away from Michael and Kayla. It is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The truth is that Christopher’s death revealed to me that, without Michael and Kayla, I am nothing. Their existence is my sole purpose in life.

  Others have told me that it is remarkable I don’t view Christopher as having been selfish. Of course, in quiet moments of anger and despair, some of this sentiment might take hold, however briefly. But I love Christopher and I will forever hold him in that special place that views him as a great partner, lover, and father. As for his brain and the terrible tricks it played on him, it reminds me always of our need not to judge others too harshly. Not everyone is capable of processing the same facts and drawing the same conclusion.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Carrying On

  Finally, when I let it come, it came fast and hard. Renewed love that is. I’d been working at it for many months — well, years really — since Christopher’s death in late 2013. Working to get to that point where I could give love a fighting chance, given that the life-experience quotient threatens to overwhelm the faint of heart.

  I had a lot of life experience at this point in my life. I know “life experi-ence” sounds like a whitewash term. But “baggage,” another frequently used term, implies that even my darkest moments haven’t been a source of strength and knowledge. On the contrary, they have given me a greater affinity with those suffering similar turmoil, defeat, and tragedy.