Underdog (29 page)

Everyone gave Mr. Barber the kid-glove treatment, the City Hall security and my press gallery colleagues included. I will never forget the day in 2002 when he urinated in a press gallery plant to a captive audience of cheering media colleagues. His intent was to mock Rob Ford, who mere hours before had begged his fellow councillors to get rid of plant-watering services to save seventy-eight thousand dollars in that year's budget – a plea to pinch pennies that was met with scorn and much derision by council and Mayor Lastman. The media in the press gallery stood howling over Mr. Barber's puerile stunt like the “cool kids” at high school, enjoying a good laugh at Mr. Ford's expense. Not one of them dared to suggest that Mr. Barber's behaviour was classless, unprofessional, and downright disgusting – or, heaven forbid, that Mr. Ford might have had a point. The culture of entitlement was so ingrained at City Hall that most of my media colleagues saw nothing wrong with the perks of office or with Mr. Barber's stunt. But Mr. Barber's most infamous moment came in 2004, when, in the heat of a scrum at council, he was, shall we say, pissed off with the answers councillors Case Ootes and Rob Ford gave him. In a fit of pique, Mr. Barber mouthed the slur “fat fuck” at then councillor Ford. It wasn't actually the first time he'd used the “f” word in front of the
media and politicians. In November of 2002, after arbitrator Tim Armstrong delivered his ruling on the CUPE union contract, Mr. Barber got incensed when then deputy mayor Ootes and Mayor Lastman contended that the arbitrator had allowed the union to continue with their generous “jobs for life” clause. For some reason, he didn't like Mr. Lastman and Mr. Ootes using the term “jobs for life,” even though that described the union clause perfectly, considering it referred to the fact that no CUPE jobs could be contracted out after ten years of service. That term had certainly resonated with the public. Mr. Barber's classless 2004 “fat fuck” lip-sync was captured in a YouTube video that made the rounds for years. Again, he got off easy – no doubt because he was a
Globe and Mail
columnist attacking two right-wing councillors. The security staff didn't even intervene in what was a very public scene. Yet a few years later, during the David Miller era, I was “written up” and a letter sent to my editor for having had the gall to get upset with a security guard who gave me a hard time for wanting to get into my office on Remembrance Day (a day off for City Hall staffers but not for us). I can only imagine how I would have been treated had I made the same very public remarks as Mr. Barber did to any of the more portly members of council. That double standard was always prevalent throughout my years as an outspoken right-wing columnist, and I forever felt I had to be doubly careful about what I did – even to the point of not eating or drinking anything when I attended public events – for fear it would be reported by a media or political detractor.

The CBC used to regularly ask me on air to fulfill their small right-wing quota – particularly during the Lastman, Miller, and Ford eras – and I rarely turned them down when
asked, even though I knew full well I could count on getting more than a few angry e-mails afterward from the usual suspects. At least the CBC made an effort to appear balanced. Canada's National Newspaper Awards (NNA) and the Ontario Press Council have never even made a pretence of being inclusive. This is by no means sour grapes. It is merely a statement of reality. As a columnist and investigative journalist for the
Toronto Sun,
who has scooped the competition many times over the years, I always knew it was a waste of my time to even put in for an NNA. We would never be nominated by the media snobs/elitists who sit on the judging panels in any of the “serious” news categories, regardless of the impact or fallout of our stories. I was talked into entering my investigative stories on spending abuses by executives with Toronto's Pan Am Games in the fall of 2013 – a series that every media outlet followed for days, which caused Premier Kathleen Wynne to be put on the hot seat in the legislature more than once, led to policy changes, and caused the firing of three senior brass with TO2015, including CEO Ian Troop. I set the agenda on that story for months. Yet I didn't even get nominated in the investigative category. As for the Press Council, after several biased rulings against the
Toronto Sun –
including one ridiculous decision when the firefighters complained about a story I broke on their secret pay hike in 2007 – I was so glad when Sun Media later pulled out of the organization in protest.

I regularly attended press scrums during the Lastman, Miller, and Ford years, feeling it was my job – all the more as a columnist – to be scrappy, to ask tough questions, and to try to set the agenda. But as time went on, I found myself growing more and more exasperated at these press opportunities.
While the press were all perfectly adept at being aggressive, bordering on vicious, with Rob Ford (no doubt because there was safety in numbers), few of them had the balls to ask the really tough questions of any other politician, or to look at any issue beyond the very superficial. Little wonder the bureaucrats and politicians felt no pressure to clean up their act. It wasn't that I minded being in the lonely position of asking tough questions, but I truly felt the public was and still is being short-changed by this kind of selective journalism.

Still, the scrums were always an excellent insight into the characters of each of my media colleagues and how they approached their jobs. Long-time
Toronto Star
city columnist Royson James, a smug, self-righteous, and lazy man, would stand just outside the pack, smirking haughtily at the media gathered and leaning in only when he might want to hear an answer or two to a question someone else had asked. Having been a city columnist since the Stone Age, he was too taken with his own importance to ask his own questions and preferred to scribble a few notes instead of using a tape recorder – the odd time he actually showed up to meetings or scrums, that is. Getting down and dirty was not for Royson – nor was hard work, for that matter. There were also the various cameramen who would aggressively push the print reporters aside to get the same shot over and over and over again from the same angle. When Adam Vaughan was still trying to get the world to notice him as a journalist for CP24, he'd ask the most ridiculous questions in an effort to appear as if he had some sort of exclusive angle. He never did. He just wanted – no, demanded – attention like a spoiled child. Most times, he was nothing more than a mediocre reporter trying to throw his weight around or appear
more intelligent than he really was. I shared an office with his late father, Colin, during my first year at City Hall and found that Adam had none of the charm or the news savvy of his dad. He actually had, and has, an extremely nasty and humourless side to him. In 1999, while at CBC, he was overheard in city council gossiping about Marilyn Lastman's depression and the fact that she'd shoplifted a pair of Jones New York pants from Eaton's at the Promenade Mall a few weeks before. Some even suggested he'd leaked the story to the now available only online – but in its heyday, extremely cheeky –
Frank
magazine, something that would not surprise me. Mr. Lastman was so incensed with Mr. Vaughan's behaviour, he threatened to kill him, and justifiably so.

There were and still are the Barbies/talking heads from the all-day news channels, both female and male, who'd ask the most vacuous or silly “soft ball” questions, having done no homework before turning up at City Hall. They'd regularly do their “segment” purring into the camera, a good number of their facts wrong. But they looked good or filled the station's diversity quota and that was all that mattered. It was not news, it was info-tainment, and unfortunately it's only getting worse. When the Rob Ford soap opera reached crisis proportions, one was forced to listen to the news channels repeat their vacuous musings over and over again. There was always the long-time general news reporter from the TV station who was so taken with his own importance, he'd launch into some long-winded question merely to hear the sound of his own voice. By the time he was done, none of us were really sure of the question, let alone the answer. There were the members of the fringe (leftist) media – the bloggers and the Twitter crowd – who hung around the scrums
mostly for the gossip factor. They seemed to produce nothing more than predictable, often slanderous attacks on Ford, fawning comments about David Miller, and personal digs at journalists – me included – who dared call them out for their behaviour. As time went on during the Rob Ford years, Twitter and obscure blogs were such hacks' preferred mode of communication, where they knew they'd find themselves in like-minded company and could get away with very nasty comments that would never be published in the mainstream media. Now don't get me wrong. I loved being part of the action at City Hall, no matter how down and dirty and personal my colleagues could get, but there's only so much of that you can take. Notwithstanding my political leanings, I always laboured to get both sides of the story, even when I was well aware that the subjects of my stories would likely not give me the privilege of a response. As the years went by, the list got longer and longer – a list I wore like a badge of honour – of councillors who refused to talk to me, blocked me on Twitter, and would brag about it: Kyle Rae, Howard Moscoe, Janet Davis, Paula Fletcher, Shelley Carroll, Maria Augimeri, Kristyn Wong-Tam, Pam McConnell etc. They called me “mean,” as if we were all in high school and it was a popularity contest. Didn't I know the drill? No matter what, I'd phone and e-mail them two, three, and four times for comment. If they chose to ignore me, that was their decision. Their deliberate silence regularly got mentioned in my column.

When I was asked to come back to the
Toronto Sun
headquarters to take on the challenge of investigative reporting in early 2014 – after nearly sixteen years at City Hall and Queen's Park – I wasn't at all thrilled about having to give up the sometimes daily or at least four-times weekly connection
I had with my readers as a columnist, not to mention my ongoing efforts to poke politicians, especially those who refused to talk to me. I absolutely loved being controversial and, even more, I loved getting feedback, both positive and negative. However, as a columnist, with the daily demands on me to follow the news, I did not have much time to investigate issues that came to my attention, as much as I tried. The only times in my career that I'd truly been able to dig into a story were in 2002 and 2012, when I was given a few weeks off to take a look at the homelessness situation in Toronto and to investigate who had bought into the newly revitalized Regent Park. Both efforts earned me awards for investigative reporting from Sun Media. I soon realized this was a great opportunity and a luxury very few in any media have, particularly the print media – either due to the lack of editorial resources or lack of space. A job that involved creating news and stirring up the dirt, rather than following the news, after twenty-five years of covering the education and political beats and being privy to so much mismanagement wherever I turned, was made for me. If I truly wanted to champion the rights of the underdog, to change policy, to set the agenda, and to expose waste and corruption, I needed the time to follow leads and do intense research using the many contacts I'd built up over the years. I've realized in the two years I've been involved in the investigative beat – as the story tips and the requests for assistance from those who don't have a voice pour in every day – that this kind of journalism is needed now more than ever.

The Wynne government and the McGuinty government before it, sadly, have set the bar so low as far as transparency, accountability, and fair play are concerned that many in the
public have lost hope that their politicians are in it for the right reasons and can be counted on to do the right thing. Never mind even listening to what their constituents want. That should be a given, but it happens less often than we care to imagine. What I'm talking about is the lowering of all standards when it comes to being ethical and trustworthy. Public trust in what were once sacred institutions is at an all-time low. No wonder. How the heck can the public trust a premier who managed to walk away with no apparent remorse from the Sudbury election scandal and who covered her tracks on the gas plant scandal and then pretends not to know anything about it? How can the public trust a mayor who vows to contract out garbage east of Toronto's Yonge Street and then backs down on his pledge for no other reason than that he wants to make nice-nice with council's petulant left-wing politicians? What are we to make of an association called the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres that issues a press release blaming the government for not putting in the proper legislation and patting themselves on the back for delivering good care following the release of a scathing Ontario auditor general's report that says the exact opposite – that community care is poorly managed and the people who run it are grossly overpaid? I'd laugh if such examples weren't so revealing of the cavalier attitude with which bureaucrats in helping professions treat their clients, and of the culture of entitlement that runs rampant throughout government bureaucracies at both the provincial and municipal levels. Sadly, it has gotten to the point where the public is surprised if politicians actually make good on their election promises and if bureaucrats actually care about the people they are supposed to help. If I can do my part to hold the feet
of politicians and bureaucrats to the fire, so much the better. Let the media pack chase after whomever they wish for the spin of the day. There's a place for all of us in a profession that has been under siege financially for years. Who knows whether newspapers will even be around in ten years? But for the time being, I am thrilled to have this opportunity to dig up the dirt.

I've come to call her The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

In the late fall of 2015, I started to notice the subtle changes in Carla Jamadar every time I popped by the Toronto branch where I do my banking and she is assistant manager.

At first I didn't want to say anything. But when I saw her face had changed dramatically – so much so that she looks like she could be on a Roman coin – I asked her if she'd lost weight.

That's when she confided to me that she'd undergone gastric bypass surgery in August of 2014 and had already shed seventy pounds. It took me a few weeks to broach the subject, and with good reason. Though it may seem surprising in someone so unafraid of saying it the way she sees it and who has conquered so many demons and obstacles in her life, the issue of weight is and always will be a highly sensitive one for me.

It has probably been one of my toughest life battles. There's no getting around it. I love food and I'm addicted to sweets. I've been in a lifelong struggle to keep off the thirty pounds that keep creeping up on me like someone else's
bad debt. I've been on Weight Watchers so many times I've lost count – always successful until a few years go by and I find myself becoming less vigilant about maintaining portion control or keeping my sweet tooth in check.

Because of my body type – my friend Moira MacDonald likes to tease me that I have Eastern European hips – I have to watch everything I eat. I joke sometimes that I only have to look at junk or snack food, cakes or candies, or breads, bagels, and pasta to gain weight. I consider myself the classic yo-yo dieter. I even took diet pills while I was in my teens.

As able as I am to laugh off the perpetual criticism I get for my controversial opinions and as unafraid as I am to hold politicians' feet to the fire, I still find myself almost reduced to tears whenever someone calls me fat or chubby. My metabolism is so slow, I can train endlessly for my half marathons and run thirty-five kilometres a week, but unless I'm also very careful about what I eat, I won't lose weight. It only gets worse as I grow older.

I assumed Carla had to be equally sensitive about her body image, especially surrounded by a culture that displays images of near-anorexic size 0 women on the front cover of every women's magazine, and that isn't adverse to fat shaming. Consider how Rob Ford, or the singer Adele were treated. I'm betting it certainly doesn't help that Carla works in an area of Toronto where spas and fitness facilities outnumber stores and restaurants, or that women in our neighbourhood are known to calorie count as sport, some of them, sadly, so anorexic they resemble Holocaust survivors.

But Carla wasn't shy about telling me that after years and years of battling obesity, trying every diet imaginable – Weight Watchers, Atkins, Jenny Craig, Dr. Bernstein,
L.A. Weight Loss – and not sticking to any of them, she had to do something for the sake of her health and for her two children. Although she was putting on about ten pounds a year, she really packed the weight on after she had her daughter, Grace, now ten, and her son, Dillon Jr., eight.

As her weight crept up to 365 pounds, Carla found that she held herself back socially – afraid to fly partly due to the embarrassment of having to ask for a seatbelt extender or going to a party for fear of sitting in a flimsy chair and breaking it. She knew that despite her kind, warm, and engaging personality, far too often people would judge her by what they saw. She felt she was constantly on display. She'd even have strangers come up to her in the bank and tell her she had such a pretty face – if only she'd lose weight. “When you're overweight, you feel like you're constantly wearing a bikini…it doesn't matter if you're a nice person,” Carla says. “Society is so obsessed about what we look like without considering what's inside.”

She insists that she didn't do the gastric surgery out of vanity – although she appreciates the compliments she's been getting since she's lost weight. She confesses that she held off doing it for a few years, terrified that she wouldn't make it through the surgery. But she finally grew tired of being tired and of not being able to enjoy the most basic of activities with her kids – whether it meant not joining them on amusement rides or even walking with them to the local park, or having to send off her understanding hubby, Dillon, to play soccer with them. She knew she couldn't continue to live like that.

Once she breezed through the surgery, the real battle began. She can no longer process sugar and can't eat any junk food. She has to eat slowly so her food digests properly.
Her portions are now limited to those the size of a small bowl or salad plate. Even though she's down 152 pounds en route to a goal of 190 pounds in total, she still has to get used to not thinking like she's still 365 pounds.

If losing 30 pounds is hard, I can only imagine what a tough uphill battle it is for her. But every week when I check in with her, she is exuberant and full of hope. In the fall of 2015, she went on her first family vacation to Florida and had no trouble putting on a bathing suit or going on rides at Disney World. She's gone down four sizes on top and four on the bottom. She recently celebrated her fortieth birthday feeling like she has endless energy, so much so that her daughter recently told her she was walking so fast, she could barely keep up. “By no means do I have the perfect body, but I feel better for my kids and that's what makes me happy,” she says.

I know Carla will reach her goal. She's come this far. There's no turning back. Carla is not one to seek attention, but she was so proud to tell me her story, thinking if she could inspire just one person to do what she's done, she'd be even happier.

She has certainly inspired me. I so respected her resilience, her discipline, and her positive attitude that she convinced me to tackle the 30 pounds I've put on since marrying Denise. If she can lose 190 pounds, surely to goodness I can shed at least 20, if not 25, pounds.

Still, I have gravitated toward Carla not merely because I identify with her weight loss battles. Despite her struggles – and there's no doubt that like me, she's an underdog – I admire her so much for her kindness, her decency, and her strength. She gives to others less fortunate, even though she is of modest means. She is hard-working, has a wonderful
sense of humour, and I can see she is much loved by her customers.

I've come to realize, through the many obstacles I've had to overcome, that one should feel blessed in life to know people like the Carlas of the world. Whenever I confront the greed, the lack of concern for the vulnerable, the self-righteousness of those who think they're always right, and the obsessive pandering to political correctness – all too common traits in the politicians, the poverty pimps, and the faux feminists I write about – and I find myself getting passionately annoyed by the wilful blindness of the electorate to how they are being treated, people like Carla give me hope that there are those who dearly want to do the right thing and who are not afraid to fight back.

If only more people and more politicians had that kind of gumption and that kind of generosity of spirit.