Mayor Rob Ford is resisting advice from senior aides to take a leave of absence, express contrition for his actions and seek medical help, sources told the Star.

As Ford’s disenchanted band of allies huddled at city hall to discuss their “concerns” and Toronto’s top business lobby group called for him to take a leave “in the best interests of the city,” the mayor himself was silent and absent, hunkering down in Etobicoke with his brothers and his mother.

Ford’s advisers, sources said, pleaded with him Thursday to announce a leave and “live to fight another day.” Senior members of the Conservative party have joined them, fearful of the impact on the party brand of the high-profile mayor’s unprecedented drug-related crisis.

But Ford, an instinctual lone wolf, was defiant, telling his team he plans to proceed with business as usual. Councillor Doug Ford, his brother, his closest adviser and a political brawler, railed Thursday night against the suggestion of a leave, sources said — invoking the example of former Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien as a warning that any surrender could be fatal.

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O’Brien stepped aside after being charged with influence-peddling related to the 2006 Ottawa mayoral election. Though he was acquitted after a high-profile trial in 2009, he never recovered politically, and he was defeated in the 2010 election.

Doug Ford is “running the show” in the Ford camp, a senior Tory source said. Alarmed Conservative emissaries called Friday to offer damage-control counsel. But the mayor “won’t hear of it,” a source said.

Ford has long been urged by his top advisors to get help for what they believe is a substance abuse problem. The senior Conservative said Doug Ford has stood in their way before.

In early 2012, an intervention was planned by Ford’s then-staff involving a company specializing in employee and family assistance programs. Addiction counsellors, who were never made aware of the mayor’s identity, were consulted to help. But Doug Ford stepped in at the last minute, insisting such drastic action was not needed, and the effort was called off.

The mayor didn’t go to city hall Friday. He refused to answer questions from journalists who trailed him around Etobicoke — under the gaze of a television helicopter that broadcast footage of his black Escalade on the move.

He met first with his family at his mother’s Etobicoke home, then at the office of the family company, Deco Labels and Tags. In between, he stopped at a local bakery-deli and ate a pepperoni stick, pronouncing it “good” and “hot” as reporters watched. He ignored their attempts to speak to him.

After he returned home, the chief executive of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, the advocacy group for the city’s business community, issued an extraordinary statement calling on him to take a leave “until the situation is resolved.”

“The mayor of the city must put Toronto first,” Carol Wilding said in the statement. “We believe the current situation must be a distraction for the mayor and therefore it is not possible to put Toronto first.”

The board, which declined to comment after the video scandal erupted in May, said Ford is now unable to achieve key policy priorities or act as the city’s “marketer-in-chief.”

“We believe the current situation must be a distraction for the mayor and therefore it is not possible to put Toronto first. It is our view that Mayor Ford cannot effectively fulfill these duties and others while this cloud hangs over him and the city,” Wilding said.

Prominent Ford allies applied their own pressure. On CBC Radio in the morning, Councillor Mike Del Grande, a fiscal hawk and Ford’s budget chief until early this year, said the mayor should “step aside.” In the afternoon, six of the 12 councillors on Ford’s own executive committee held a brief news conference in which they announced they had conveyed unspecified concerns to Ford through Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly.

Flanking Denzil Minnan-Wong as he spoke were Gary Crawford, Peter Leon, Peter Milczyn, Cesar Palacio, and Frances Nunziata. Nunziata, the council speaker, is one of his most loyal and well-known supporters.

The six members of the executive were far more reticent than the blunt Del Grande, refusing to offer any specifics on the nature of their concerns. Kelly, in a separate exchange with the media, also refused to say what the concerns were — he said the media should be able to assume — but he promised to convey them to Ford on Saturday in some way.

“I hope that the mayor will listen very carefully and I hope that he would look at these concerns through the eyes of the people of Toronto, his colleagues on council, and himself and his family,” Kelly said.

“And I’m hoping that, upon reflection, that he will make the right decision that affords him the opportunity to address the concerns of the three groups that I’ve just identified.”

Comments from Ford’s lawyer, Dennis Morris, and from Doug Ford suggested an attempt to buy time. Both men, speaking to AM640 host John Oakley, said Police Chief Bill Blair should immediately release the video that appears to show the mayor smoking crack cocaine; Morris said it could show the mayor smoking “cigarettes or marijuana” rather than crack.

Blair has maintained that this “evidence” will emerge in court, and police spokesman Mark Pugash rejected the appeal for a direct release to the public.

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“Since the beginning of Project Traveller, Chief Blair has made it clear that the law requires us to investigate, collect evidence, and turn that evidence over to the courts, and they, and they alone, have the authority to decide whether or not any evidence can be released,” Pugash said.

With files from Alex Ballingall

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