Joe Killoran felt some trepidation immediately after blasting Rob Ford on Canada Day — and that was even before their videotaped encounter turned into a viral sensation.

“I was a little unsure if it was a wise thing to do or not,” the 35-year-old high school teacher said Wednesday.

But Killoran is OK with his public venting, even if it has earned him the wrath of Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother and campaign manager, and knowing Google will preserve forever the saucy “shirtless jogger” sobriquet.

“I’m glad that my questions got heard,” he said Wednesday as he prepared a pot of coffee in his kitchen, barefoot but clad in a pale blue polo shirt and khaki shorts.

“No other politician has so disrespected the people of Toronto continuously, and I want that to stop.”

Killoran was out for a Canada Day jog — minus his shirt on the muggy afternoon — and was shocked to find the mayor and his entourage marching in the parade near his house in the city’s east-end.

A day earlier, he watched in disbelief as the mayor held his post-rehab news conference where he apologized for his alcohol- and drug-fuelled binges and behaviour.

Killoran was stunned when Ford turned around without answering any questions, triggering his spontaneous July 1 outburst, he says.

“Answer the questions,” he yelled at Ford.

“I’m just out for a jog. This guy here? He’s a joke. He’s a liar. It’s one thing to be sick, that’s fine, but he has questions to answer to the people of Toronto and he simply won’t do it. He’s a racist; he’s homophobic. It looks like he’s corrupt.”

Killoran was particularly incensed because Ford was using the parade for electioneering, although John Tory and Olivia Chow and other politicians were also on the stump.

At the time, the only response he got from the Fords was their trademark “frozen grins.”

Since then, Doug Ford has let loose, calling Killoran a lunatic and a “bad apple” who needs anger management training, a racist and a teacher he wouldn’t let near his dog. When the elder Ford failed to provide any example of the alleged racist comment, the councillor suggested “you can be racist against people that have a drinking problem.”

“The whole thing is absurd,” says Killoran. He spent Wednesday teaching English at summer school.

“I understand he has a drinking problem and I wish him well with that. That’s not what makes him a bad mayor. He’s a bad mayor quite apart from that. Sober he’s a terrible mayor.”

Doug, Killoran says, is reacting in his typical style: attacking and smearing those who criticize or challenge the Fords.

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He laughs over a charge by Doug Ford that he needs anger management.

“I didn’t swear, I didn’t threaten, I didn’t yell out racist slurs or say anything misogynistic or disgustingly racist or homophobic. I was a citizen who was, I think, justifiably angry with him.”

Doug Ford also suggested that Killoran, who taught Grade 12 politics at Malvern Collegiate Institute during the regular school year, spent the year indoctrinating his students to hate Rob Ford.

“No, not at all,” he says. “I don’t have any interest in having my students adopt my political views,” he said.

The story of Toronto’s world-famous mayor was hard to ignore in a class about politics, he added.

Killoran, who was born and raised in the east end, said his brush with fame has been “surprising.” He says he has no political aspirations.

He has volunteered in the past for political campaigns — he struggles to remember but recalls briefly “handing out buttons and stuff” for Jack Layton.

He has no involvement in any of the other mayoral campaigns, and was not a “plant,” as Doug Ford suggested.

“If I was going to do that, I don’t think I would show up with no shirt on,” he laughed.

Not if his mother had any say.

“Her dream for me wouldn’t be running shirtless around the streets. I know she thinks that’s a little trashy.”

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