Photo by Scott Snider, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

• George Stroumboulopoulos is starting a summer gig with CNN on June 9th. He’ll be doing ten weeks of a show called, simply, Stroumboulopoulos. The network says his guests will include fellow Canadian Ellen Page, as well as Robert Kirkman, who writes the Walking Dead comic books. Will Americans enjoy Strombo? Will they ever learn to pronounce and spell his name as well as we have?
• Mayor Rob Ford has now alienated the Toronto Sun‘s editorial board, leaving him without a single friend in the media other than Sue-Ann Levy. This is not good for him.
• Among the concessions the LCBO’s union won during its down-to-the-wire contract negotiations earlier this month was the right to not wear ties to work.

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Photo courtesy of Michael Christian.

• Remember Koilos? The scary, Lovecraftian steel sculpture that was suddenly removed from its spot in the Distillery District last week? The artist, Michael Christian, now tells us that its new home is “on a large dock off an island on Lake Muskoka,” where it can live out its retirement under the watchful eye of a new private owner. A picture of the beast in its new location is above.
• You know how some people are like, “oh man, what if this video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack is a fake?” Hazlitt points out that, if the video is as described, there’s basically no way it could be a fraud unless these alleged crack dealers have access to alien video-editing technology.
• And here’s a video of Rob Ford at a gas station, being accosted with questions about his alleged crack use. Ford still hasn’t definitively denied anything. It has been six days.
• Grid readers have voted, and now a new park in the West Don Lands will be called Corktown Common.

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Earlier this afternoon, the Toronto Catholic District School Board announced that Mayor Rob Ford has been fired from his other job: his gig as a part-time volunteer football coach for Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School.

The Star points out that the Catholic school board was already in the process of reviewing Ford’s involvement at Don Bosco before his recent drug scandal began making headlines. The review was a result of some disparaging things Ford said about his teenaged players during a March interview with David Menzies, of Sun News.

This is the unceremonious end of a political saga for Ford. He was frequently criticized in the press for devoting time to his football team at the expense of some of his official duties. He also took heat for using paid City staffers to help with some of his coaching duties, in apparent violation of City rules. On one occasion, he was also criticized for apparently commandeering two TTC buses to carry his players home from a game, though police and TTC officials claimed, at the time, that the mayor was not directly responsible for the incident.

Ford has been coaching for over a decade, and even heads a foundation dedicated to helping Toronto schools start their own football programs. His involvement at Don Bosco was a continual point of pride for him, even when it caused him political problems. The board hasn’t specified a reason for his dismissal, but no matter the cause, it’s undoubtedly personally painful for the mayor.

The full text of the TCDSB’s press release is below.

The Toronto Catholic District School (TCDSB) thanks Mayor Rob Ford for his contribution and many years of service to the Don Bosco Eagles Football Program. The Board has informed Mr. Ford of our decision to pursue a different direction with a new volunteer head coach for the Don Bosco Eagles senior football team.

Mr. Ford’s passion for football, his commitment to the Don Bosco players and their success speaks for itself. The Board is very grateful for the Mayor’s contribution.

“This is an exciting game that helps to develop strategic thinking, strength and agility while also fostering values such as teamwork, perseverance and good sportsmanship. Mr. Ford has helped our students rise to the challenge and realize their potential as both football players and young men,” says Bruce Rodrigues, the Director of Education. “This decision was based on what is best for our students, our school and the Don Bosco community.”

The Board’s primary responsibility is to ensure a positive learning environment for all our students and promote our school’s ongoing commitment to academic achievement, well-being and excellence. We recognize and respect that the Mayor’s first commitment is to the priorities of the taxpayers and citizens of the City of Toronto.

The football program will continue at Don Bosco and at all other TCDSB high schools that have teams. The TCDSB is appreciative for the thousands of volunteers who augment the work of our dedicated staff for various athletic and academic school programs and events throughout the school year.

A screenshot of the Draft John Tory website, as it appeared earlier today.

With all the craziness surrounding Mayor Rob Ford in recent days—did he smoke crack or didn’t he?—it’s not a stretch to imagine that some of Toronto’s conservative-leaning voters are starting to wish, if they weren’t already wishing, that there were another candidate who could take up their banner in the 2014 municipal election. Right on cue, here’s a website called Draft John Tory, aimed at convincing the one-time mayoral hopeful to put his name on the ballot once again.

Samuel Greene, one of the founders of Draft John Tory, denies that the website, which launched last week, was a direct response to Ford’s latest scrape. “This is certainly an idea and a cause that has been brewing for some time now,” he says. “Because the distractions that we’ve been seeing at City Hall are by no means new. People, I think, are looking for experienced and serious leadership at City Hall.”

Greene, who is 22 years old and about to start law school at the University of Toronto, says the group behind Draft John Tory consists of about six core members, some of whom have had some past involvement in city politics (he declined to name them), but none of whom have any direct link with Tory. Tory himself isn’t involved. The goal, at this point, is only to twist his arm, and maybe provide a forum for a broader discussion about leadership in Toronto.

As of the weekend, the site had collected the email addresses of about 100 supporters.

Tory, now a conservative radio host on Newstalk 1010, ran for mayor in 2003, but lost to David Miller. He also lost two provincial races while serving as leader of the Ontario PC party between 2004 and 2009. Even so, he’s respected by people of all political leanings, and he’s certainly, at any rate, a lot more level-headed than Mayor Ford. There were calls for Tory to run for mayor in 2010, but he ultimately decided not to.

Greene doesn’t think Tory’s past defeats should deter him from trying for the mayoralty a second time. “John Diefenbaker lost elections time and time again before eventually becoming prime minister,” Greene says. “Previous setbacks aren’t an impediment, I think, especially for someone as distinguished and with the attributes that Mr. Tory actually has.”

American late-night hosts who first discovered Rob Ford as a result of some of his more innocent blunders are falling in love with Toronto all over again thanks to the latest allegations against our mayor. Last night, both the The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live had lengthy segments about Ford, and about the video that supposedly shows him smoking crack.

If you missed it all, the Daily Show video is embedded above. The Jimmy Kimmel clip is below.

(For what it’s worth, we liked Jon Stewart’s take on this a lot better than Kimmel’s. The latter relies on a lot of lame, Canadian Bacon–level jokes, though it does win some points back by casting Jim O’Heir, from Parks and Recreation, as ersatz Ford.)

A memorial for Darcy Allan Sheppard, in 2009.

• Some new documents related to bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard’s fatal 2009 altercation with former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant surfaced online today, thanks to a freedom-of-information request by Sheppard’s father. We’re not sure they reveal anything new about what was already a very intensely investigated case, but Sheppard Sr. thinks they cast doubt on the official version of events, in which his son is said to have been the aggressor.
• Gawker’s Rob Ford Crackstarter (that is, their crowdfunding campaign to raise the $200,000 necessary to buy a cell-phone video that allegedly shows Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack) has topped $90,000. Now, if you donate, they’ll even give you copies of The Little Book of Rob Ford, from local publisher House of Anansi.
• It has sure been a big couple weeks for Toronto in the international press. Here’s the New York Times on Porter’s plans to expand Billy Bishop Airport.

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A rendering of what Pape Station will look like, once construction there is finished. Image courtesy of the TTC.

The TTC announced earlier today that Pape Station will be closed for about two weeks, starting on June 15 and ending on the 26th. The amazing thing about this is that it’s happening, in a sense, by popular demand. The TTC used an online poll to determine the the public’s preferred schedule of closures while workers put the finishing touches on a long-delayed, four-year effort to modernize the station. This, the option that will arguably create the most short-term pain for riders, was the winner.

Throughout the closure, trains won’t stop at Pape, and buses that normally stop there will be diverted to nearby stations.

The TTC has said that closing the station for 12 straight days will allow it to finish most of the renovations by September, whereas not closing the station would have caused the construction to continue until December. The online poll also gave riders the option of having the station closed on six consecutive weekends.

The TTC has more details about the closure in its press release.

—In a press release issued earlier today, Horwath, the Ontario NDP leader, announced a deal with the Ontario Liberal party, putting an end to the possibility of an immediate provincial election. In exchange for not opposing the Liberal budget (and thereby toppling Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government) Horwath won a few concessions, including the establishment of a new Financial Accountability Office and a 15 per cent cut to car insurance premiums.

We don’t know whether he did it or not, but we do know this much: three reporters say they have seen a cell-phone video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

After the news broke on Gawker Thursday evening, the Twitter reaction was immediate and explosive. The silence in local media, meanwhile, was deafening. No Toronto outlet other than the Star had seen—or, at any rate, would admit to having seen—the video in question, which was recorded, supposedly, by a man believed to have provided Ford with the crack he allegedly smoked.

After the Star‘s article went up, around midnight, it took until morning for much of the rest of the city—and the world—to catch up. And boy, have they.

Here’s what’s being said about Ford’s latest scandal.

Locally, various city councillors have begun to weigh in. Ford’s deputy mayor, Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre), had this to say, according to the Globe:

“I have not seen any indication of him using any substances like this, or anything else for that matter.”

Meanwhile, John Parker (Ward 26, Don Valley West), Ford’s deputy speaker, called on the mayor to address the allegations head on:

“We all hope that the inferences that are floating around are untrue and the only one who can set us straight on that is the Mayor.”

And the police are also aware of the situation. The same Globe article quotes TPS spokesperson Mark Pugash saying the following:

“…we are monitoring the situation closely.”

Whatever that means.

Ford isn’t the first big-city mayor to find himself in this position. In 1990, Marion Barry, who was then the mayor of Washington D.C., was videotaped smoking crack by the FBI. He was later convicted of drug possession.

In an interview with Washington Citypaper, Barry had this to say about the Ford case:

“Unless he was entrapped by the government, it’s not similar.”

It’s worth noting that although Barry lost the mayoral election following his arrest, he did win a city council seat after being released from prison. Then, in 1993, he was elected mayor again.

And that’s not the only international press the story has attracted. Spurred on by Gawker, lots of out-of-town outlets are starting to discover Mayor Ford.

The BBC has picked up the story on its website.

New York Magazine has something on one of its blogs.

NBC is running a wire story from Reuters, meaning Mayor Ford’s name could start appearing in lots of other places fairly soon.

And, naturally, there’s a Taiwanese animation of the story now making the rounds on YouTube:

Another thing to come out of this whole affair was a Twitterfight between a Gawker editor and a reporter at the Toronto Star. The main bone of contention was the fact that the Star is referring to its story on the crack video as an “exclusive,” despite the fact that Gawker had reported on the video hours earlier.

Granted, it was a pretty one-sided fight. Let’s take a look, shall we?

And finally, let’s not forget the several Indiegogo campaigns that have sprung up in an attempt to pay for the crack video’s release. The owners are reportedly asking for six figures. There’s one semi-legit one that was set up by the Vancouver Province, and then at least one other whose legitimacy we can’t vouch for.

And, in the past hour, Gawker has launched its own Indiegogo campaign. It probably stands the best chance of succeeding, but that’s not an endorsement of spending your money on this. We all want to see the video, but do we really want to pay off the guys who took it?

UPDATE: May 17, 2013, 10:50 AM Earthquakes Canada is now reporting that the quake was 5.2 magnitude and occurred near Shawville, Quebec. There was a 4.1-magnitude aftershock.

• Someone is making YouTube videos that (affectionately) parody Chris Hadfield’s famous dispatches from the International Space Station. One of them is embedded above.
• Meanwhile, the real Hadfield readjusts to life on Earth after landing in Kazakhstan on Monday night. “I could feel the weight of my lips and tongue and had to change how I was talking,” he told reporters. “I didn’t realize I had learned to talk with a weightless tongue.”
• The Grid has a neat visual breakdown of the relative heights of all of Toronto’s tallest skyscrapers—including those that haven’t been built yet.
• Psy, the “Gangnam Style” guy, is going to be co-hosting the MuchMusic Video Awards this year. This is, what, the third time he’s been to Toronto since his song blew up on YouTube? He does so many paid appearances. We suspect the reason he never seems to remove his sunglasses is that he doesn’t want us seeing the deadness in his eyes.

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WHERE: First Canadian Place

WHEN: Earlier today

WHAT: The main lobby of Canada’s tallest skyscraper looks like an arcade in a 1980s shopping mall today, thanks to 100 pinball machines carted in by the Stratford Festival as a promotion for its new production of Tommy—which, of course, is a rock opera, written by members of The Who, about a “deaf, dumb, and blind kid,” who “sure plays a mean pinball.” The machines will remain until 6 p.m. today, so there’s still time to go claim your turn at the flippers. No quarters are required; the games are free.