In the spring of 2011, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's staff enlisted bureaucrats to explore whether the city could expropriate 7,195 square feet of land to help a soap company expand its parking lot

What no one in the civil service was told at that the time was that the soap manufacturer, Apollo Health and Beauty Care, contracts the Ford family's printing company, Deco Labels and Tags, to make labels for its shampoos and body washes.

On Monday, the mayor denied any wrongdoing, explaining that he "did not try to expropriate land" and that he hasn't done "anything of the sort for Apollo."

Follow the trail of e-mails that show how Apollo urged the mayor to solve its parking dilemma, how expropriation became a possibility, and how the bureaucracy tried to resist being drawn into what one civil servant dubbed a "dog and pony show."