Mayor Ford is Maclean’s Newsmaker of the Year

Maclean’s magazine has named Mayor Rob Ford its Newsmaker of the Year.

“Rob Ford was a larger-than-life figure whose story transcended borders,” Maclean’s editor Mark Stevenson said in a release on Thursday. “In a year of some great successes and heroics — and some great, roiling scandals — he was impossible to ignore, and the clear choice as our Newsmaker of the Year.”

On Nov. 5, the embattled Toronto mayor admitted to using crack cocaine after months of denial and after police said they have the video allegedly showing him smoking from a crack pipe.

Since then, details from a police document targeting the mayor and his friend, accused drug dealer Alexander Lisi, show ex-Ford staffers believed Ford is an alcoholic and consorted with suspected prostitutes.

Ford apologized for his behaviour, including the use of profane language when denying the allegations, but he refused to resign. By mid-November, councillors took the matter into their own hands by voting to strip him of most of his mayoral powers.

Maclean’s, out on newsstands on Thursday, also looks at the year’s other notable news stories including: