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“Fortitude,” one man said to the mayor. “You hang in there buddy.”

After the mayor laid a wreath at the foot of the cenotaph at Toronto’s Old City Hall he walked past a row of veterans and at least one refused to shake his hand.

Tony Smith, who was stationed in Germany after the Second World War, says he wouldn’t shake Ford’s hand because he says the mayor is “a druggie.”

Smith, 80, says he doesn’t agree with drugs and Ford shouldn’t have attended the ceremony with a crack cocaine admission hanging over his head.

And Mayor Ford appears to be addressing a challenge to his leadership head on, by making an attempt by one of his former political allies to get him to take a leave of absence one of his “key item” on the next council agenda. As a key item, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s motion will be debated first or second, and could open the mayor up to questioning by members of council.

“Let’s get it on,” Ford said when asked why he has made Mr. Minnan-Wong’s motion his key item.

Mr. Minnan-Wong and Councillor Peter Milczyn are calling on the mayor to apologize for “misleading” the city as to the existence of a video that appears to show him smoking crack cocaine, to submit to questioning by police, to apologize for writing a letter of reference for his friend Alexander Lisi, who is charged with drug trafficking and extortion, to take a temporary leave of absence to address his “personal issues.”

If council adopts the motion, it would be symbolic, as the governing body has no mechanism to force the mayor to leave.

“I think it’s critical that council speaks as one voice to say that what he’s done is wrong, that he should be going to the police and cooperating, that he should be apologizing and fundamentally that he should go, take a leave of absence, remove himself from council while he gets the help he needs and let the city move forward and not be distracted with any of the future information that might be coming out,” he said.

With files from The Canadian Press