Retablo en agradecimiento a Doug Ford por la protección de Canadá

More about Retablo en agradecimiento a Doug Ford por la protección de Canadá

I first heard about Doug selling hash in high school the way most Canadian myths arrive—half whispered, half laughed, drifting through the fog of gymnasiums and parking lots. It wasn’t crime so much as commerce, an early rehearsal for a country that would later pretend it never experimented. Doug was never the wild one anyway. He was the guy with the ledger, the guy who knew how much was left, who owed what, and when to stop before the police cars became real.

Rob, on the other hand, was a full-blown sideshow. Rob was civic theater performed with a lighter and poor judgment. Crack-smoking primer brother, municipal Icarus, tabloid dream. Where Doug kept his feet on the floor, Rob launched himself headfirst into the televised abyss, dragging Toronto politics behind him like a loose sled. Watching it felt like observing a national stress test. Would the country crack? It didn’t. It just sighed and went back to work.

Doug learned. You could see it. He watched the spectacle the way a pilot watches another plane lose an engine. Not with sympathy, exactly, but with intense professional interest. He took notes without writing anything down.

Years later, there he was—Doug Ford, in a commercial with Ronald Reagan, back when conservatism was still sold as optimism instead of grievance. Reagan smiling like a grandfather clock that somehow talked. Doug looked younger, sturdier, already practicing the posture of a man who intended to last.

And now here we are. Somewhere between developer pragmatism and populist theater, Doug has earned something I never expected to give him: my leftist hippy respect. Not agreement—never that—but recognition. He’s a political animal who understands the ground under his boots, a man who learned from chaos rather than drowning in it.

Canada produces strange figures. Sometimes they stumble into decency by accident. Sometimes they survive long enough to surprise you. Doug Ford did both, and that alone is worth a long look through tired, skeptical eyes.