A look back at Toronto’s scandalous political past

When John Tory was elected as Toronto’s 65th mayor, he ushered in a period of relative calm at city hall following the bombastic, and sometimes just bombed, Rob Ford era.

But not even crack tapes, references to cunnilingus during media scrums, and woozy monologues in Jamaican patois can hold a candle to the sordid scandals that colour Toronto’s rich mayoral history.

As Toronto city hall nears its 50th anniversary, we are looking back at the past five decades, and well beyond, to undercover a colourful past that’s plastered with controversy.

The city indeed boasts a legacy of politicians who tirelessly fought to transform a lawless former frontier town and colonial outpost into a world class metropolis. Toronto’s mayors have been bold visionaries, brave social reformers and advocates, and champions of prosperity and equality.

They have also been cold-blooded murderers, sadistic torturers, and vain, dishonest scoundrels.

As local political historian and writer Mark Maloney explained to CityNews.ca in a past interview, Toronto’s mayoral past may be ripe with honourable accomplishments, but it also bears the stains of spilled blood and scandal.

A month before taking office in 1838, John Powell shot and killed Captain Anthony Anderson, an event that served to increase his popularity.  He also tried to snuff out a former mayor, but his gun jammed, giving his intended victim a second lease on life.

Such violence was not uncommon in those days.

“As a mayor we had a guy involved with human torture,” Maloney explained.

“His name was George Gurnett (1837 and 1848-50).  George was involved with what they call a tar and feathering.  What you do is take someone and beat them up, beat them to a pulp, you roll them around on the ground in chicken feathers and then you pour molten hot tar, burning hot from a stove, all over their body.

“And they are burning to a crisp and then the tar lasts on your skin for about a week.  And when you go to rip the feathers off, one by one, you are peeling off your own skin.  So we’ve had a mayor involved with human torture, we had another one, Henry Sherwood, who did a home invasion,” he notes before launching into another remarkable tale.

“He went in with a mob and went into the home of another guy who had become mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, and basically trashed his whole place, took his printing press and his furniture and dumped it all in the Toronto Harbour, while poor Mckenzie’s mother was up in the attic fearing for her life.”

When it comes to bullies, one mayor became widely feared for his violent outbursts and physical attacks.

“Sam McBride, he was a real jock, he was a man’s man, and if he didn’t like you as a councillor he would just beat you up. Punch you out. And he used to take the councillor documents and he would wrap them up and bang them over the head of the councillors and he would pin them against the wall of the chambers and punch them out. He was a heavy drinker too,” Maloney adds, as if we needed more evidence of his truculence.

The Gravy Train running wild

Whether it was during his rocky term as mayor, or his many years as city councillor, Rob Ford often accused his peers at city hall of “spending like drunken sailors.”

His bold accusations gained a measure of credence after several instances of questionable spending were made public.

Adam Giambrone made headlines after he hit the city up for a tab of nearly $4,000 for French lessons. Even more grating to many was the former TTC Chair’s spending of nearly $3,000 on cabs.

Karen Stintz expensed $2,650 for public speaking lessons.

Kyle Rae threw himself a retirement party at a cost of $12,000. He also once submitted a receipt (split between six councillors) for $1,039 worth of Pride Parade beads.

And who can forget when Sandra Bussin found the media spotlight for expensing a $205 bunny suit?

All of these instances garnered a certain degree of public backlash and a growing resentment, but according to Maloney, nothing has ever come close to former mayor Allan Lamport’s lavish spending spree in the early 1950s.

Wildly popular and charismatic, Lamport, who fought for Sunday sports and cocktail lounges when both were prohibited, was also the man at the centre of what Maloney calls Toronto’s ‘Scandal of the Century.’

“Allan Lamport went to the Royal York hotel and arranged to get a suite given to him free of charge from the hotel, suite 1735, but it was on the proviso that he would spend liberally on food, room service, booze, parties, you name it, so he did,” Maloney reveals.

“So for two years he partied in the room, but all the bills were sent to the City Clerk, the City of Toronto, because Lamport had booked the suite under the City Clerk’s name.  But Lamport had never gone to city council for authorization to spend any money, and he had never gotten any council approval, which today would be absolutely unheard of. So for two years he spent what would today be the equivalent of $370,000 on parties!”

In a cruel twist of irony, it would be his successor, incumbent mayor Leslie Saunders, who would unfairly take the majority of the heat once word of the spending came to light and became the boiling issue at the epicentre of the next election.

“What happened was the mayor who succeeded him took the rap and the reason was Allan Lamport had left by that time to go to the Toronto Transit Commission to be the vice chair … so Saunders was facing re-election and he was not too popular because he made some anti-Catholic slurs and Catholics were not too happy. So it came up about three or four days before the election happened, someone raised the question, “Was Toronto being run from the Royal York hotel in this shadowy, private, hidden suite by a clique of citizens?” So Saunders, who wasn’t in the loop, said “Suite? What suite? I don’t know anything about a suite!”

No one believed Saunders and with the help of a loose-lipped hotel chambermaid and some investigative digging, the hedonistic details soon surfaced.

“It became an election issue and the newspapers of the day printed every receipt, like champagne and liqueurs, you name it, on the front page of all the daily newspapers in Toronto, it was a huge scandal.”

“Nathan Phillips then got elected very narrowly on a platform that he would look into it and clean it up and kind of fix matters. It came out eventually, but Lamport didn’t really take the rap for it.”

A judicial inquiry was called but it quickly lost steam once Phillips, noted for his prudence, took office.  With public interest waning, it was eventually called off.

“There was nothing mysterious about this suite,” Lamport was quoted as saying in the surprisingly quiet aftermath. “It was none of anyone’s business. I don’t think any mayor should be called upon to make explanations for his actions.”

Other interesting mayoral facts:

• Mayor Earnest Macdonald (1900) held office for only one year after which he went insane and died a terrible death from acute syphilis.

• Both William Lyon Mackenize (1834) and Dr. Thomas Morrison (1836) were forced to escape Toronto and live in exile.  Morrison for high treason, and Mackenzie for attempting to stage a coup d’etat.

• William Howland (1886-87), who vowed to stamp out corruption, gambling, drugs and prostitution, coined the term Toronto The Good.