I was generous. I didn’t call the mayor a liar.

Perhaps he was somehow misled by an excitable neighbour. Perhaps he somehow thought he saw something he didn’t see. He tried to get me arrested, to destroy my career; I decided to correct him gently, deferentially.

Not any more. Not 19 months later. Rob Ford is lying about me, he knows it, and it’s vile.

Ford spoke to Conrad Black, the Vision TV host, about the encounter he had with me on May 2, 2012. Literally every single thing Ford told Black about my conduct that evening is false in some way.

I’ve received advice from a lawyer, but I haven’t yet decided whether to take legal action. For now, let’s review Ford’s words lie by lie:

“…Daniel Dale, in my backyard…” I never set foot in the mayor’s backyard: I was in the adjacent park the whole time, reporting a story about Ford’s rare application to buy public land. Det. Tricia Johnston, the lead investigator on the case Ford triggered with his needless call to police, told me that she found “no” evidence that I ever breached his property line. If I had, she said, I would have been charged with a crime.

”... taking pictures of little kids.” The mayor’s children were nowhere in sight. I took a single picture that evening, of a boring chunk of parkland; my BlackBerry, which I goofily neglected to charge before heading to Etobicoke, died before that picture could save. During the investigation, I voluntarily offered to let Det. Johnston turn on my phone, which had been in police custody, and scroll through my stored photos. She found no photos whatsoever from the evening of the incident. None.

”… this was about 5 o’clock at night, when it was getting a little dark.” It was actually about 7:30 p.m. — Ford sometimes says inaccurate things even when the accurate thing would be more favourable to him — but it was still a bright, clear evening. Sunset was about 8:20 that day; next May, go out 50 minutes before sunset and see how much trouble you have seeing people near you. Or watch the Star’s May 2013 video of Ford putting magnets on cars, which was taken in Etobicoke at about the same time of a much grimmer day.

”…I caught this guy on the bricks, over my fence, taking pictures … he had cinderblocks that he had to step on to get over my fence …” Bricks or blocks, sir? It’s a lie either way: I stood on nothing but park grass the whole time. As Det. Johnston has said, I was never peering over the fence — she said I would have been charged if I had even been doing that. Maybe Councillor Doug Ford could bolster his brother’s case by releasing the surveillance footage the councillor falsely said proved my close proximity to the fence? Curious that the police reviewed the footage and came to a different conclusion.

”…I said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? He jumped 15 feet and said, ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me.’ It’s funny.” I never jumped, and I only wish I had a Wiggins-esque vertical leap, but the mayor did frighten me, and I did ask him not to hit me — because, as he failed to mention, he ran at me with a raised fist, which he then held less than two metres from my face, and refused to lower that fist until I surrendered my BlackBerry to him. He did so even though he knew who I was, and even though I explained, loudly and clearly and repeatedly, what I was doing there.

Finally and crucially, there is the thing Ford did not quite say but strongly and unmistakably suggested: that I am a pedophile.

Doug Ford can deny all he wants that this was the mayor’s insinuation. It’s what just about everybody knows he insinuated. It’s the word that people are already attaching to my name in emails and Twitter posts. It’s the word that will now come up every time a prospective interviewee or new acquaintance Googles me.

It’s false. It’s malicious. It’s defamatory. It’s mind-boggling. It’s damn gross.

I’ve been advised by smart people to sue. I’m truly not yet sure what I will do.

On one hand: Ford’s words are obviously slanderous, my name is important to me, and I don’t take kindly to bullying. Most importantly, it seems clear to me that the slander will continue if I do not fight back now: Doug Ford publicly “jokes” about me “hiding in the bushes,” and refers to my “stalking,” at least once every two months; in the immediate aftermath of the incident, Rob Ford suggested I was “taking pictures of (his) kids and family,” and he wondered aloud if I was a “sicko.” The mayor’s comments to Black were his most repulsive yet, but they did not come out of the blue.

On the other hand, the Fords relish their fights with the media, and they are skilled at portraying themselves as victims even when they have been aggressors. I have no doubt the mayor would gleefully attempt to depict my effort to hold him to account as an attack on him by the Toronto Star.

I’ll make two things clear.

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One: Whatever I do, I’ll continue to cover Ford with the non-grudge-bearing professionalism and courtesy I’ve shown him every day since the incident. My work will be no more affected by the mayor’s lies about me, or any effort I may make to challenge him on those lies, than it has been affected by the mayor’s lies about the many other things he has lied about over my three years on the city hall beat. I will not be forced out of my job because someone said an abhorrent thing about me, nor because I find it necessary to defend my reputation.

Two: If I do take legal action, the Star’s got nothing to do with it. In fact, if I were a businessman or teacher or anything other than a Toronto Star reporter, I would have served Ford with a libel notice already. I’m cautious because I don’t like being or staying the centre of attention, because I like my life the way it is, because it would be tiresome to listen to Ford’s claims of a vendetta, and because it seems like it would probably be unpleasant to find yourself in a long public spat with a wealthy and generally unrepentant person with good lawyers and a big megaphone.

No, Mayor Ford. If I sue, it has nothing to do with my place of employment. It’s about me, you, and your problem with the truth.