Doug Ford is 57 years old. He got his high school diploma from Scarlett Heights Collegiate Institute which has since been renamed “Scarlett Heights Entrepreneurial Academy (SHEA),” in Toronto, and then started a program at Humber college which he dropped out of two months in. His father, Doug Ford Sr, was the Founder and CEO of a label printing business called “Deco,” that boasts doing “over $100,000,000 in sales,” which his father founded in 1962, and of which Ford became involved in the management of in the 1990s and went on to become the President of in 2002. Taking on the new responsibilities associated with the business’s “expansion to Chicago.”
Ford’s first involvement in politics came when Doug Holyday approached Deco to print stickers for signs for Holyday’s 1994 mayoral campaign in Etobicoke. Ford took interest in what Holyday was doing and offered to “canvas” for him for free; an offer of which Holyday accepted.
Ford then got some more experience with our political system assisting in his father’s campaigns as a PC MPP candidate in 1995 and 1999, and then by running his brother, and former mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford’s council campaigns in 2000, 2003, and 2006, and the campaign that got him elected as mayor of Toronto in 2010.
On October 25, 2010, Ford was elected as a councillor in Toronto City Council Ward 2.
Then in June of 2013, Ford announced that he would not run for re-election as councillor in the next Toronto election, scheduled for 2014: “I won’t be running next time, at least down here I won’t be running, I’ll be running away from this place in 16 months,” Ford said in response to a reporter’s question at the time.
After Rob Ford entered drug rehab in May 2014, Ford commented that he would not rule out running for mayor. Rob Ford returned from rehab and continued his campaign for mayor, but withdrew after he was diagnosed with an abdominal tumour and hospitalized. Doug Ford then entered the mayoral campaign in the last hour before the nomination deadline on September 12, 2014, and it did not go well.
Ford was lambasted by the ‘Canadian Press’ for “misogynistic” remarks he had made, and was accused of having previously been a drug dealer and actively being entangled in Conflicts of Interests.
(Keep in mind as well that this was also recently after Rob Ford admitted that he “might have smoked some crack in a drunken stupor approximately a year ago …in case it comes up.,” to a group of reporters).
British comedian John Oliver notably also did a segment on Ford’s mayoral campaign, which he closed off begging Torontonians to vote for Doug Ford “for the world’s amusement.”
Ford predictably lost his 2014 bid to become mayor of Toronto by a large margin, and many thought that his political career was over.
But it was not.
On September 9, 2017, Ford announced that he was planning on running in the 2018 Toronto mayoral election again. But then on February 1, 2018, he reversed course and announced that he was going to run to be the leader of the Ontario PC party instead.
Following the sudden resignation of Patrick Brown on January 25, 2018, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario announced a new leader would need to be chosen before the 2018 Ontario general election in June.
Ford was the first candidate to announce, on January 29, that he would seek the leadership of the party; On January 31, 2018, Ford announced he would seek the PC nomination in Etobicoke North and run for the seat in the 2018 election.
He was one of the four candidates running for the PC leadership along with Christine Elliott, Caroline Mulroney, and Tanya Granic Allen.
On March 10, Ford won the PC leadership in a very tight race, after two recounts and accusations of “serious irregularities with the voting process” made by his main opponent, Christine Eliott, that she insisted “be investigated,” but ultimately ended up backing down from and then endorsing him and serving in his cabinet.
Ford led the PC Party to a majority government in the general election held on June 7, 2018, taking 76 of 124 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, including his own riding of Etobicoke North, and on June 29, 2018, was sworn in as the Premier of Ontario.
