Day by day: A timeline of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s alleged drug use scandal

TORONTO – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is embroiled in a scandal involving alleged use of crack cocaine. A timeline:

May 16: American website Gawker.com and The Toronto Star report seeing a cellphone video taken by a drug dealer that appears toshow Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. The reports cannot be verified.

May 17: Ford dismisses the allegations as “ridiculous” and calls them a Star smear job.

May 18: City councillors begin calling on Ford to address the allegations properly. Gawker starts a campaign trying to raise $200,000 to buy the cellphone video.

May 19: Ford cancels his weekly show on Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010.

May 20: Late-night TV host Jay Leno mocks Ford, saying to be fair, “there’s not a lot to do in Toronto.”

May 21: Other late-night hosts, Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart, make fun of Ford and the scandal.

May 22: Ford’s brother, Coun. Doug Ford, blasts the media and Gawker, and defends the mayor.

May 23: Ford’s chief of staff Mark Towhey leaves job, escorted from city hall by security.

May 24: Ford breaks silence to deny he uses crack cocaine and lambaste the media. He takes no questions.

May 25: The Globe and Mail alleges that Doug Ford was a hashish dealer in the 1980s. Doug Ford denies the allegations and his lawyer calls the Globe’s use of unidentified sources “irresponsible and unprofessional journalism.”

May 26: Ford appears on his weekly radio show for the first time since the scandal broke, denying the video at the centre of the scandal exists and calling members of the media “a bunch of maggots.”

May 27: The mayor’s press secretary and his deputy leave his staff. Ford apologizes to the media for his comments about them the day before. Gawker reaches its $200,000 goal to raise funds to buy the video but says it lost contact with the drug dealer reported to be shopping it around the previous week.

(The Canadian Press)