Thursday, May 13, 1999
MICHAEL VALPY

Mel Lastman, the mayor of Canada's largest city, sat in misery in his office yesterday, furious with himself for causing the very thing he and his family had tried so hard to make not happen: news media reports that his wife had been apprehended for allegedly shoplifting.

Outside, in a public corridor on the second floor of City Hall's rotunda, the journalists waited . . . and waited . . . for him to appear.

At one point, the mayor's affable and ever-courteous press secretary, Jim Warren, asked TV cameramen how they wanted Mr. Lastman when he appeared -- running past them with a coat over his head? It probably was the closest anyone had seen Mr. Warren to irritation.

We have here a confluence of events, personalities and journalistic morality.

The story of Marilyn Lastman's troubles had been known to reporters at City Hall for weeks. The cops leaked.

A number of councillors had let the mayor know that Adam Vaughan, CBC-TV's municipal affairs reporter, had told them about Mrs. Lastman, adding further toxicity to an already poisonous relationship between the two men. An uncharacteristically benign item about a shoplifting incident -- no names mentioned -- appeared in Frank magazine.

When the mayor saw Mr. Vaughan in the council chamber Tuesday afternoon, he steamed toward him in a rage, telling him to stay away from his family and, according to reports from witnesses and from Mr. Vaughan himself, saying: "If you don't leave my family alone, I'll kill you."

That evening, John Honderich, publisher of The Toronto Star, called the mayor to tell him the Star planned to publish a story about his encounter with Mr. Vaughan and about the shoplifting incident. The mayor went to Mr. Honderich's office.

Mr. Honderich, in a conversation yesterday, refused to disclose what he and the mayor discussed. He said, however, that the mayor's encounter with Mr. Vaughan had pushed Marilyn Lastman's troubles into the public realm. "There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that that was the issue [between Mr. Lastman and Mr. Vaughan]."

Mr. Honderich said the Star had obtained the police report of the shoplifting incident before the mayor's encounter with Mr. Vaughan. Until that point, he said, the Star had not decided whether to publish it. I asked him whether the Star would have published the story if the mayor had not had the encounter with Mr. Vaughan. The publisher said, "It would have been a very difficult call."

Mr. Honderich implied that what may have been a private family matter for the mayor spilled into a public matter Tuesday afternoon, touching on Mr. Lastman's performance as mayor.

Is Mr. Honderich right? Yes. When the mayor tells a reporter he'll "kill" him if he doesn't "stay away" from his family, it's a public issue.

Was the Star justified in going into as much detail as it did about Mrs. Lastman -- reproducing the police report that was leaked to the newspaper? The Star could have explained what had happened without exposing the mayor and his family to the publication of the full, salacious details of the case.

Has the mayor been politically damaged? Probably not, but he should be . . . a bit. Those councillors who don't like him will like him less. Those who do like him -- the majority -- will continue to like him. With the public, he will remain popular as a mayor who is ably fusing Toronto into one city from the seven pre-amalgamation municipalities. There will be, and should be, public sympathy for him and his family. At the same time, his habit of speaking emotionally and intemperately causes real public policy problems -- witness his verbal assault on Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton and his vow to make Mr. Hampton's life miserable before he realized that Mr. Hampton was saving the city from a messy transit strike.

And Mr. Vaughan? Whether the stories about Mr. Vaughan's gossiping are true, he is an aggressive -- albeit, able -- young reporter who, quite frankly, pokes the mayor. On Tuesday, Mr. Lastman indicated he had had enough poking.

More Information on the Lastman Incident

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