How fitting that 2013 should end in disaster; for Toronto, the year has been one long disaster.

Though we can’t blame Rob Ford for the ice storm, he has already done more damage than anything nature could inflict upon the city.

Indeed, if it wasn’t bad enough that freezing rain left more than 250,000 Torontonians without power for days, Ford left the whole city looking like some over-sized backwater inhabited by rubes too dumb to know they’re being played for suckers.

The fact nearly 40 percent of Torontonians say they’re willing to consider voting for him again only adds to the perception this is a city of fools.

If Ford’s shallowness, laziness and quickness to lie weren’t enough, he took advantage of the ice storm to put on one of the most shameless displays of political self-promotion ever witnessed in Toronto. It happened late last week when the mayor had his minions pass out Rob Ford fridge magnets while he talked to the media at a public-housing complex left cold and dark by the ice storm.

In the meantime, thanks to Ford, the entire region has lost another three years on transit. A scheme, Transit City, fully planned and funded, was thrown out the window. The mayor’s insistence on subways — subways that will never pay their way — came from his belief that road rage is an appropriate basis for a civic transit policy.

If that weren’t bad enough, politicians from all three levels of government fell into line with Ford even though at least some of them knew that what they were doing was ruinous.

This is no way to run a city, of course, but Toronto crossed that line back in 2010 when it elected Ford.

The truth is that the city is in freefall, not just a joke to the rest of the world but, sadly, also to itself. Toronto is no longer taken seriously by its own inhabitants, let alone anyone else. If it can recover from the destruction wrought by its ridiculous chief magistrate, it will take years.

Ford’s term has been an indictment of Toronto; he has brought out the worst of a political system rent by crass opportunism and transparent only in its venality. From Prime Minister Stephen Harper on down, Canada’s leaders have made power an end in itself. The democratic impulse, barely detectable at the healthiest of times, has all but disappeared. It is enough now to win an election; democracy ends when the votes are counted and a winner declared.

For Canadian cities, which have no constitutional existence, Rob Ford has confirmed the worst suspicions of those who dismiss municipal government as the “junior” political player. In light of Ford and civic corruption in Quebec, many believe urban Canada got what it deserves. Were it not for the mayors of Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, cities in this country would have no reason for hope.

If 2013 made anything clear, it was that Torontonians have lost faith in themselves and their city. Rob Ford, after all, is more a symptom than a cause. Anyone who paid attention knew he was a loser long before he ran for mayor. For him, the city has always been the enemy; he said that over and over again. His crassness and ignorance are no surprise.

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The ice storm revealed a city that has let itself go, a city in which self-confidence has given way to self-contempt. There may have been other mayors who didn’t love Toronto, but Rob Ford is the first to hate it.