Define normal. Justin Altmann, mayor of Whitchurch-Stouffville, 50 kilometres north of Toronto, thinks it’s normal to assemble a link chart — you know, the kind police use for crime scene investigations — of more than 30 local people, including staff, on his office washroom walls. OK, then.

The photos, which include one of Toronto Star reporter Noor Javed, were connected by black lines and arrows along with Trumpish handwritten signs such as “You’re Hired” and “You’re Fired.” They’re called Crazy Walls and TV shows use them to explain a complicated plot to viewers without putting them to sleep.

There are several kinds of Crazy Walls, as always-useful TVTropes.org explains. Altmann’s wall sounds a bit like the Room Full of Crazy in which a conspirer or a victim fills the entire room with images. Then there is the Stalker Shrine, all about one person, and the String Theory board, which uses coloured ribbon or string rather than Altmann’s emphatic Magic Marker. Finally, there is the Big Board which posts photos, events, maps and everything it can find.

Altmann, a former poultry farmer, has created a very Big Board, covering three walls. There are doll figures, cartoons, the Toronto Star’s logo, several photos of women, two of the fire chief and of course the eerie mapping. Everything’s connected, the wall seems to say. A vast conspiracy is afoot. Apparently York Region, its logo pictured, is quite the nest of vipers.

Worse, there are coffee cups, upside down on a paper towel. In a bathroom? I think not.

Integrity commissioner Suzanne Craig called the board a “serious incident of workplace harassment.” After Altmann refused to publicly apologize and was also found to have shared confidential information in a separate complaint, Craig had had enough. She recommended docking him six months’ pay, letting him talk to staff only by email and visiting municipal offices only to pick up mail and attend council meetings. Town council agreed, except for one guy. There’s always one.

Craig said Altmann had harmed the reputation of Whitchurch-Stouffville, and she’s right.

The area’s MP is the noble Dr. Jane Philpott, Minister of Indigenous Services. When I think Stouffville, I used to think Philpott, humanitarian, overachiever, saint, you know the type. Now I just think creepy toilet situations.

I think of a man with a plan. I think of movies where babysitters go down into that dark basement without a flashlight. I think of ill-considered teen camping trips. I think of the call coming from inside the house. I think Get Out.

One of Craig’s previous reports referred to a threat assessment, which has been kept secret, and several frightened wall women are desperate to see it. Even Altmann hasn’t seen it, which may be a good thing, as he may do something foolish, I mean, something more foolish than he has already done.

Altmann has said the walls were a visual aid to finding out why so many town officials had quit and who might have leaked secret council documents. He hates leaks. “I have been lied to. I have been manipulated. I have had harassment against me since Day 1 in this office,” he told a local paper.

Then he took out a full-page ad in another paper, saying, among other things, “I am the sum of past generations, and the future investment for our town. I believe we need to walk the path to the future together.” It sounded a bit like Shelley’s “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings” and a bit Rupi Kaur’s “I will no longer/compare my path to others.” Altmann thinks a lot, but not deeply.

“The wall is normal,” he tells reporter Javed. But we’ve heard that before, mainly from President Donald Trump about his beloved Mexican fencing. Is Trump normal? Millions of words have been devoted to this question. The consensus is No.

Is Altmann normal? He has his fans, many of whom yell at Javed, I suppose about her dang-nab city ways and can’t a feller have his ensuite, his shed, his basement dungeon thick with lichen and those pink potato roots?

Altmann invited the entire town to his 2016 wedding (the municipality has 46,000 souls) where he had a horse and carriage, doves and a 2.5-metre wedding cake. I wonder if his wife wouldn’t let him do his Big Board at home and that’s why he chose, fatally, to coat the walls at work.

Then on March 4, he invited the entire town to the couple’s baby shower. Did people on his Big Board show up? Did he take notice?

Admit it, most people have a little Richard Nixon in them. We have an enemies list, but we don’t generally do a collage. I know who my enemies are. They’re all on Twitter, they all look beardy and they want my job.

Speaking of bathrooms, I too have art. I placed one painting so I have something to look at when I’m in the bath. It’s an iBride portrait of a rabbit in an Elizabethan tunic and starched white ruff, a hawk chained to his wrist.

Over the toilet there’s a small oil painting of a rooster. Because guys need something to look at too. Ah, I have an insight into the mayor’s mise-en-scène, and it isn’t good.

The Altmann problem is very much of our time. When politicians are democratically elected because no one noticed they were off the rails, what is to be done?

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Democracy offers us a range of nuttery from Canada’s anti-abortion New Democrats, to regenerated American Smoot-Hawleys humming hard for tariffs and a Depression in 2015, to Alberta bachelor Jason Kenney devoting his life to Western rules-based pregnancies.

Mayor Altmann fits right in. But what does he want, ultimately? This I cannot fathom.

hmallick@thestar.ca