Wikimandias

When I recently mentioned Harold Ballard, I linked to his Wikipedia entry for anyone outside Canada or too young to remember the former owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Having looked him up, I skimmed through the entry for a trip down memory lane.

Why would I reminisce over such an unpleasant man? I find it's reassuring to see the mighty that have fallen. So often, there are unpleasant things in our society that are so heavily entrenched that it seems they will never be defeated. So revisiting such forces of the past reminds us that there is hope for tomorrow. For instance, Amazon.com may seem like a bullying monopoly right now, but one look at the current state of Microsoft shows that they will get their comeuppance eventually too.

Sure, the Leafs still haven't won the cup. In fact, here's a depressing thought: Ballard became majority owner of the Leafs in 1971, not long after their last Cup in 1967. Then he owned them until his death nineteen years later in 1990. But that was twenty-four years ago! So he's not even mostly responsible for the Leafs' futility anymore.

So I was reading the list of selected Ballard incidents. Usually, the wikieditors frown on that sort of thing in their esteemed site, but with Ballard they seem to have conceded that there's no way to describe him; his personality had a Zen quality that must be explained through examples.

And as I was reading through these incidents, I was struck by the similarities between him and Rob Ford, another Torontonian that you could never really describe:

• hugely antisocial, but has somehow made enough connections to climb the ladder
• Doesn't even pretend to be civil
• Acts like a stereotypical business man from fifty years earlier
• Many people love him for his entertainment value
• Will drop to any level to insult or slander enemies

So there is hope here too.  For all his votes and radio shows, one day Ford too will be just a series of bizarre anecdotes.